Dance

Dance Performances Value Catching This March and April

March 1, 2025

Over the subsequent two months, a bevy of latest works have their premieres and a significant competition returns to London. (And maintain a watch out for our breakdown of the danciest new musicals hitting Broadway levels this spring—we’ll be masking 10 dance-heavy reveals aiming to open earlier than the Tony eligibility cutoff.) Right here’s what we’re hoping to catch.

Staging Censorship

A dancer stands and turns her head to one side, eyes closed, as two dancers behind her, one kneeling and the other standing, wrap their arms around her. — Dance NOW! Miami rehearsing *Blue Pencil*. Picture by Amanda Davis, courtesy Dance NOW! Miami.

MIAMI AND CASCAIS, PORTUGAL In Blue Pencil, the colour of censorship stains societies. This newest collaboration between Dance NOW! Miami and Portugal’s Dança em Diálogos—whose creative director, Solange Melo, shares choreographic credit score with DNM administrators Hannah Baumgarten and Diego Salterini—paperwork historical past and rings out a well timed warning. As 2024 noticed a file variety of books banned within the U.S., with Florida topping the checklist, relevance looms massive right here in portrayals of resilience referencing the Portuguese authorities’s mid-Twentieth-century suppression of discourse with the strokes of a censor’s pencil. Alongside different repertory, DNM premieres its portion of this defiant work at Miami Theater Heart Feb. 28 earlier than mixing casts with the abroad troupe for the whole piece at Vila das Artes in Cascais, Portugal, March 12. dancenowmiami.org. —Guillermo Perez

Gathering Jewels

In a wash of orange and white light, four dancers in white almost blur as they move rapidly through the space. — Shu Lea Cheang and Dondon Hounwn’s *Hagay Dreaming*. Picture by Hsuan Lang Lin, courtesy Martha Oakes PR.

LONDON Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels returns to London with a bang, with 15 efficiency applications scattered between Sadler’s Wells, the Royal Opera Home, Tate Trendy, and Southbank Centre. Hagay Dreaming, a collaboration between Taiwanese American artist Shu Lea Cheang and Indigenous efficiency artist Dondon Hounwn, impressed by an Indigenous Taiwanese legend a couple of hunter encountering spirits known as Hagay in a dream, debuts on the Tate Trendy March 13–15. Pam Tanowitz premieres Neither Drums nor Trumpets, a piece drawing on the storied historical past of the Royal Opera Home and carried out in its ethereal Paul Hamlyn Corridor, March 25–26. Jules Cunningham alights at Sadler’s Wells East March 27–28 with two premieres of their very own: CROW, a reimagining of a duet carried out by Julius Eastman and Pauline Oliveros practically 50 years in the past in New York Metropolis, and Pigeons, which pulls on pigeon groupings and conduct to query methods of being alone and collectively, set to Eastman’s Homosexual Guerilla. Additional choices embody works by George Balanchine, Trisha Brown, and Merce Cunningham, in addition to a slew of European firms and artists, plus workshops for each professionals and nondancer viewers members. March 12–April 8. dancereflections-vancleefarpels.com. —Courtney Escoyne

Step by Step

Nine dancers costumed in flannel shirts, khaki pants, and sneakers jam on a blue-lit stage. — Rennie Harris Puremovement in Harris’ *P-Funk*. Picture by Mark Garvin, courtesy Penn Stay Arts.

PHILADELPHIA That includes dancers steeped in regional avenue kinds from throughout the U.S., Rennie Harris’ American Avenue Dancer celebrates the outsized influence of hip hop on the humanities world. Philadelphia’s Rennie Harris Puremovement is joined by Michael Manson and his Home of Jit, from Detroit, and Chicago footwork specialists Creation International led by King Charles, in addition to DJ Razor Ramon. The work is ready to premiere March 14–15 at Penn Stay Arts, the place Harris is presently the artist in residence. pennlivearts.org. —CE

A Harmful Disco

One performer pinches her nose closed and raises a hand in the air while the other encircles her with her arms. They wear neon and over-the-top makeup. An audience sitting against the nearest wall is blurry in the background. — Lisa Fagan and Lena Engelstein. Picture by Maria Baranova, courtesy New York Stay Arts.

NEW YORK CITY Lisa Fagan and Lena Engelstein descend upon New York Stay Arts to premiere their newest dance theater work. Set in 1976, Friday Evening Rat Catchers begins with contestants dancing beneath a shimmering disco ball, just for the social gathering to return to a screeching halt after their recreation is reconfigured and hunks of cement puncture the dancehall’s blissful bubble. Who, if anybody, comes out on prime? March 27–29. newyorklivearts.org. —CE

Previous and Current

A dancer with dark brown hair, burgundy tank top and magenta colored pants on the left is sitting on a ground covered with uncooked white rice, looking up at the rice her right hand is tossing up in the air. Dancer with short black hair wearing an off-white short-sleeved button up shirt and dark brown pants is jumping up in the air as he throws rice with both hands into the air. — *A Bridge to Now / Un Puente hacia el Presente*. Picture by Robbie Sweeny, courtesy Lenora Lee Dance.

SAN FRANCISCO In A Bridge to Now / Un Puente hacia el Presente, collaborators Lenora Lee and Moyra Silva Rodríguez excavate the histories of Chinese language immigrants to the U.S. and Peru. Knowledgeable by interviews with the descendants of Chinese language indentured servants in each nations, which increase Tatsu Aoki and Francis Wong’s sound rating, the multimedia work interrogates the legacies and scars left by the pairing of labor exploitation and anti-immigrant sentiment on these communities, whereas additionally honoring their perseverance and cultural contributions. After premiering in Peru final fall, the work receives its U.S. premiere at Dance Mission Theater March 28–30. lenoraleedance.com. —CE

Regency Highway Journey

Performers in black on a sumptuous stage set form a pyramid behind a dancer in a white flapper dress as she shimmies. — Final 12 months’s manufacturing of *Cabaret* on the Outdated Globe was directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes. Picture by Jim Cox, courtesy Outdated Globe.

SAN DIEGO Regency Ladies follows a younger, single lady in Nineteenth-century England as she goes on a life-changing highway journey along with her three finest buddies to search for assist after realizing she’s pregnant and going through social break. The brand new musical comedy, directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes, runs at San Diego’s Outdated Globe April 2–Could 4. theoldglobe.org. —CE

Bringing It Again

Two dancers are photographed from the wings. One slumps forward, while upstage the other arches back to face the ceiling, arms raised overhead and one foot floating up. — Reggie Wilson’s *Large BRICK: a person’s piece*. Picture by Alexandra Corazza, courtesy Helene Davis PR.

NEW YORK CITY In The Reclamation, choreographer Reggie Wilson returns to the concepts underpinning his early work, investigating their gestural motion vocabularies and the brand new questions they increase in a seek for a method via at present’s frenetic instances. Fist and Heel Efficiency Group premieres the work at NYU Skirball April 4–5. nyuskirball.org. —CE

Getting Jazzy

Five dancers costumed in blue and green pastels move against a white backdrop. At the center, two men dance together, balancing on forced arch as their foreheads touch. To the left, a dancer drapes his arms to one side as he balances in parallel retiré, pulling off center. To the right, one dancer falls to her knees, hair flying back as her chin tips up, while another hitches up one foot, hands reaching down toward it. — ODC/Dance. Picture by RJ Muna, courtesy John Hill PR.

SAN FRANCISCO Sidra Bell creates her first work for ODC/Dance to music (carried out stay) by avant-garde jazz composer Mary Halvorson, premiering as a part of the corporate’s Dance Downtown program at Yerba Buena Heart for the Arts. Creative director Brenda Means’s Unintended Penalties (A Meditation) and affiliate choreographer Kimi Okada’s Inkwell spherical out this system. Plus, an excerpt from Means’s After the Deluge, a response to the impacts of local weather change slated to debut subsequent 12 months, will likely be proven through the firm’s April 11 gala efficiency. April 10–13. odc.dance. —CE

Acquainted and Unfamiliar

Three dancers costumed in purple stand in front of one another. The dancer furthest downstage takes a wide stance, arms sweeping out as she leans toward her left; the two dancers behind her face stage right. The one in the middle loops an arm around her waist, while the dancer upstage curves an arm to the side. — Daniel Charon’s *Purple Sonata 24*. Picture by Stuart Ruckman, courtesy Ririe-Woodbury Dance Firm.

SALT LAKE CITY For its RE-ACT program, Ririe-Woodbury Dance Firm premieres two new works: one by creative director Daniel Charon, in collaboration with director and dramaturg Alexandra Harbold, and the opposite by Atlanta-based dancemaker Annalee Traylor, the corporate’s inaugural Choreographic Canvas commissioned artist. April 17–19. ririewoodbury.com. —CE

Taking Goal

Two dancers wearing unitards in grey and peach patterned with abstract eyes pose against a grey backdrop. One lunges to the side to support their partner, whose head hovers just above the floor as they are dipped into a backbend, knees bent into attitude. — A.I.M by Kyle Abraham’s Jamaal Bowman and Olivia Wang. Picture by Carrie Schneider, courtesy Richard Kornberg & Associates.

NEW YORK CITY A.I.M by Kyle Abraham returns to The Joyce Theater with a premiere by the corporate’s founder (his first collaboration with composer Shelley Washington), latest works by Andrea Miller (YEAR) and Rena Butler (Shell of A Shell of The Shell), and Paul Singh’s Simply Your Two Wrists, with the David Lang rating performed stay by Trio Mediæval. April 22–27. joyce.org. —CE