The best dance shows in NYC this month

Austin McCormick and his neo-Baroque troupe (Queen of Hearts) specialize in lavish pageants that combine dance, burlesque and circus arts into a heady speciality cocktail. Their latest venture offers a sexy spin on lust, envy, greed and other deadlies.  

The City Parks Foundation's free outdoor festival SummerStage graces various green spaces around the city with dance, music and theater. In the dance department, the offerings include Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (Coney Island Amphitheater, July 23), Maimouna Keita African Dance Company (Corporal Thompson Park, August 5), Urban Bush Women (Crotona Park , August 12), excerpts from The Jazz Continuum (Marcus Garvey Park, August 19), a tribute to Greg Tate featuring Burnt Sugar/Danz (Marcus Garvey Park, August 20) and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (Central Park, August 28). Visit the SummerStage website for details. 

Tom Gold, a former soloist with New York City Ballet, has been helming his own neoclassical company since 2008. The group performs the Gold pieces Vision Fugitives and A Felicidades in both of its free pop-up performances at the Play Ground on Little Island this month; the August 1 bill also offers Intimacies and an excerpt from Rapid Oxidation, while the one on August 13 includes Gershwin Preludes and a new work set to music by Erik Satie.

Five of New York City's leading dance companies—Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, Ballet Hispánico, Dance Theatre of Harlem and New York City Ballet—perform together in the second annual edition of the BAAND Festival, sharing an outdoor stage at Lincoln Center in a run that consists of five free shows. Each lineup is slightly different, but they all include a performance of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa's One for All, a world-premiere commission that features dancers from all five troupes. Admission is free and mostly first-come-first-served, but a limited number of advance reservations are available; the window for making them starts at noon on Monday, August 8. Find out more about advance reservations here. In addition to the evening performances in Damrosch Park, the companies offer educational afternoon workshops throughout the festival, by general admission on a first-come-first-served basis. New York City Ballet: Allegro Brillante | Photograph: Courtesy ​Erin Baiano​ Here is a full list of the works that are scheduled for  each night of the BAAND Festival:Tuesday, August 9:One for All by Annabelle Lopez OchoaAlvin Ailey American Dance Theater: Cry by Alvin AileyBallet Hispánico: Con Brazos Abiertos by Michelle ManzanalesDance Theatre of Harlem: When Love by Helen PickettAmerican Ballet Theatre: Children's Songs Dance by Jessica LangNew York City Ballet: Red Angels by Ulysses Dove Wednesday, August 10:One for All by Annabelle Lopez OchoaBallet Hispáni

Hip-hop dance auteur Rennie Harris gives a fresh squeeze to Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist in this uplifting musical tale of a young black man's journey toward redemption and healing. Along with hip-hop and house dance, the show incoporates live gospel music. 

Choreographer Kyle Abraham and EDM producer-composer Jlin collaborate on an Afrofuturist exploration of death, mourning and rebirth, set to an electronic adaptation of Mozart's Requiem in D minor. Performed by ten dancers from Abraham's dance company, A.I.M, the piece's New York premiere at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater is offered on a "choose-what-you-pay" basis, with tickets available for as little as $5 (though $35 is suggested).

The free annual Battery Dance Festival, formerly known as the Downtown Dance Festival, takes place outdoors at Robert F. Wagner Park, in front of the sparkling New York Harbor. For its 41st edition this year, it is offering both in-person and streaming options. The lineup includes multiple U.S. or world premieres, and the participating companies include visiting groups from Singapore, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Canada. The first seven shows are general admission, but reservations are required for the 6pm finale on August 20 (which is held indoors at the Schimmel Center). Here is a full schedule of the artists and companies that will be performing. Visit the festival's website for additional details. Saturday, August 13 (Young Voices in Dance):Sydney Burtis, The DifferenceZachary Seto, Nostalgic Beings of SynesthesiaCamryn and Courtney Spero, DistanceKate Louissaint, Bird’s EyeLerato Ragontse, In Between ChangeAnya Susan, In ConversationMyles King, The Last FoundryShannon Harkins, Dreams and Nightmares of a Mutant People Sunday, August 14:Dancing Wheels Company, Unconquered WarriorsBallet Nepantla, Let Down and Huasteca SuiteLinotip, Diagonal & CainGaudanse, nanibuPeridance Contemporary Dance Company, Just Above the SurfaceThe Vanaver Caravan, Vanaver Caravan Retrospective Dancing Wheels | Photograph: Courtesy Steven Pisano Monday, August 15 (India Independence Day):Lineup to be announced Tuesday, August 16: Christina Carminucci, The Solidarity Series IV: Free Spirit

The Florida company, which has a special affinity for works by Sir Frederick Ashton, returns to the Joyce with a triple bill. The program includes two Ashton pieces—Birthday Offering (1956) and the once-lost Varii Capricci (1983)—along with a world premiere by Jessica Lang.

Rockaway Beach's annual outdoor dance festival returns with another free, sandy offering. This year's edition celebrates the natural-world inspirations of the late Trisha Brown with a program that includes multiple early Brown works—staged along the shore from Beach 97th Street to Beach 110th Street, with audiences following the dancers from site to site—and concludes with 1980's Opal Loop (1980), the first piece from her Unstable Molecular Structure cycle. An afterparty follows at the Rockaway Hotel. (Beach Sessions and Rockaway Film Festival also present, as a companion piece, a screening of Philip Glass and Robert Wilson's long 1976 experimental opera Einstein on the Beach on Friday, August 19, at 7:30pm, at the outdoor Arverne Cinema.) 

New York City Ballet leaps back to Lincoln Center for a month of shows that are packed with works by company cofounder George Balanchine: 12 of them in all, including two all-Balanchine bills and two that are shared with dances by Jerome Robbins. Also on the lineup are pieces by Alexei Ratmansky and current NYCB resident choreographer Justin Peck, plus premieres by Kyle Abraham and Gianna Reisen. The company's current constellation of étoiles comprises Jared Angle, Tyler Angle, Harrison Ball, Ashley Bouder, Chun Wai Chan, Adrian Danchig-Waring, Megan Fairchild, Jovani Furlan, Joseph Gordon, Anthony Huxley, Sterling Hyltin, Russell Janzen, Sara Mearns, Tiler Peck, Unity Phelan, Taylor Stanley, Daniel Ulbricht, Andrew Veyette, Peter Walker and Indiana Woodward.