Season at a glance

Special package performance and “Condition Arriving” lecture $25, purchase here. NYC Premiere Bill Shannon premieres Touch Update, a new work exploring contemporary modes of digital versus interpersonal representation and physicality. Touch Update “reverse engineers” Shannon’s virtuosic technique for dancing on crutches, as he dissects and dismantles the...

Special package performance and “Condition Arriving” lecture $25, purchase here. The Condition Arriving is an entertaining yet academic lecture that details through storytelling the evolution of Bill Shannon’s invented movement form that he uses for walking, dance, skateboarding and performance art on crutches. Shannon’s framing of a specific subset of his...

In this high energy workshop Bill Shannon will teach rhythm, holding patterns and body positions invented over his life of dance and play on crutches. Workshop participants will be mentally and physically challenged to improvise ways of recreating Bill’s dance on crutches in real time without their own use of crutches. This workshop offers able-bodied dancers...

Barnard/Columbia Dances at New York Live Arts features choreography by modern dance legend Merce Cunningham in a MinEvent arranged and staged by Jamie Scott and Dylan Crossman expressly for Barnard and Columbia dancers. New works to premier are by David Dorfman, Amy Hall Garner, and Adrienne Truscott....

Live Arts’ legendary Fresh Tracks performance and residency program continues its 54-year commitment to bringing new voices to the forefront. The program provides five emerging artists with a 50-hour studio residency, a professionally produced shared evening bill in the New York Live Arts Theater, commission fee, one-on-one dialogue...

Premiere of DANCENOISE’s newest work, Lock ‘Em Up, celebrating the duo’s 35 years of collaboration. DANCENOISE’s Anne Iobst and Lucy Sexton premiere a new group work created in response to the current political climate. Their legendary stage shows—built on manic choreography, indiscriminate violence, biting up-to-the-minute social commentary, and precise...

“One does not just watch a dance by Zvi Gotheiner. One enters a world with its own internal logic, a sensual, organic world of movement, language, and images where one is pulled along by currents unseen and inevitable.” (Dance Magazine) ZviDance’s 2018 Home season at New York...

New York Live Arts’ dynamic showcase of new and recent works by Live Arts commissioned artists, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company and curated guests is presented during the  Association of Performing Arts Professionals’ annual conference and will feature full theater productions, recently premiered works, and new studio...

what will we be like when we get there premiered at Live Arts in March 2018. Choreographer Joanna Kotze is accompanied by dancer Omagbitse Omagbemi, visual artist Jonathan Allen, and composer/musician Ryan Seaton (2018 Bessie Nominee) in the newest iteration of this charged collaboration. Through their various artistic forms, the...

Live Artery studio showing of Bill Shannon’s “Touch Update,” for Live Feed theatre showing click here. Known for creating groundbreaking choreography that explores the social constructions surrounding disabled bodies, Bill Shannon’s latest work combines movement, wearable projection technology, and video installation to explore the significant and subtle implications of physical...

Through Chameleon, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko undertakes an investigation into the fugitive realities of Black Diasporan people. Through the melding of live feed and augmented reality media, Queer and Black Critical Theory studies, archives of public and personal narratives from the Stonewall Riots to Juneteenth, Kosoko’s work explores how minoritarian communities...

Live Artery showing of Y by RoseAnne Spradlin. For information on the world premiere of Y at Live Arts earlier this season, click here. New York Lives Arts’ 2017-19 Randjelović/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist (RCA) RoseAnne Spradlin presents  her latest work “Y”. Spradlin, an alumnus of Fresh Tracks (1990) who received a Bessie...

Last Audience is the newest work by the Bessie-award-winning collaborative group, a canary torsi. An immersive performance imagined as a ritual enacted with and for each audience, the piece utilizes the themes and structures of the traditional requiem to enact scores of movement, environment, and sound. Greetings, processions, and requests...

Live Artery showing, for the NYC premiere of another piece apart earlier this season, click here. Jennifer Nugent and Paul Matteson, both Bessie Award-winning performers and former Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company dancers (2008-2014), are known for their phenomenal partnering work, creating duets that are intense, forceful, and passionate. Their...

Set in an atmosphere of light and absence, I hunger for you is comprised of five dancers looking deeply into feelings of impulsiveness, ecstasy, ritual, and desire as they ride the edge of controlled abandon and vibrating stillness. This new evening length work is a meditation on faith and the...

Live Artery showing, presenters please RSVP here. For the theatre showing of Body Comes Apart later this season, click here. Body Comes Apart is a declaration of love, commitment, catharsis, and rage. Continuing our 10-year challenge of making work based in abstraction but in response to trauma, Body Comes Apart...

Sean Dorsey’s timely and urgent commentary on black queer love, issues arounds whiteness, and perspectives of Trans and LGBTQ empowerment, come together through BOYS IN TROUBLE. Recognized as the nation’s first acclaimed transgender modern dance choreographer, Sean Dorsey’s ability to stay in conversation with toxic masculinity, the trans revolution, Black...

Recipient of the 2018 Juried Bessie Award, Kyle Marshall joins forces with Dare Ayorinde, and Myssi Robinson to navigate the nuances and twisted spectrum of the black identity. All coming from varied backgrounds, the trio takes on conversations prevalent to the black community: tokenism, appropriation, stereotyping, and representation. With original...

Of her piece that premiered at Live Arts in 2018 in collaboration with American Realness and received two 2018 Bessie Dance and Performance Wards, Marjani Forté-Saunders says : “My Father’s story allows me to burrow into my lineage, to ritualistically remember, interrogate, and relish in the celestial ecliptic journeys of...

The ensemble work of Abby Zbikowski’s company, Abby Z and the New Utility, share their newest creation developed from their rigorous physical practice and boundless mental capacities. Drawing on distinct histories in hip-hop, modern dance, West African, Tap, synchronized swimming, ice skating, and House, the corps explores the conflicts and...

Presented in collaboration with American Realness Written and Choreographed by Jack Ferver Performed by Reid Bartelme, Jack Ferver, Lloyd Knight, Garen Scribner, and James Whiteside Everything Is Imaginable, is an evening-length interdisciplinary performance work examining and juxtaposing the lives and technical virtuosity of its queer performers. In turns manic and poetic, the work...

Founded by McKersin Previlus, Lakaï Dance Theatre showcases The Block: An Afro-Musical with influences of Jazz, Hip-Hop, and Afro-Diasporic styles. As the street becomes a stage for self-reflection, the ensemble displays the realities of an inner city life–the toxic masculinity, the racial profiling, and the violence–through spoken word and musical...

Live Artery studio showing, for the full theatre performance later this season please click here. Nerushalmy’s acclaimed Paramodernities series returns to Live Artery with a showing of three full installments (85 minutes. Open to presenters only). In this unique project, iconic modern choreographies are deconstructed and performed alongside contributions by...

Open Company Classes with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company is rooted in the style of the Company as developed by Bill T. Jones and Janet Wong. Progressing from somatic floor work to standing exercises, technical and creative challenges culminate in lush, expressive phrase work.

Live Arts continues its Open Spectrum Community Dialogues, curated by culture creator Brian Tate of The Tate Group, providing space for reflection on the most vital issues facing communities today.

Ellen Robbins’ Dances by Very Young Choreographers, a showcase of young talent dancers, has become one of New York Live Arts’ most beloved community programs, inspiring children by exposing them to live performances created and performed by their peers. Alumni Concert An evening concert of work by Alumni who...

Bill T. Jones talks with Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director of New York’s Public Theater, who has nurtured one game-changing hit after another for the Public, including the award-winning musical Hamilton. Oskar Eustis has served as the Artistic Director of The Public Theater since 2005. In the last three...

Developed by Bill T. Jones with Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong, Analogy Trilogy is based on oral histories and inspired by W.G. Sebald’s award-winning novel The Emigrants. Part One, Analogy/Dora: Tramontane, recounts the story of Dora Amelan, a French Jewish nurse, social worker, and World War II survivor. Part Two Analogy/Lance:...

The Live Feed creative residency program is a laboratory for the development of new commissioned work directed toward our theater. This informal workshop showing offers a sneak peek into the artist’s process and ideas before they hit our stage. Taking place within the intimate working space of the Live Arts studio, each...

“Indeed, Blackness provided the occasion for self reflection as well as for an exploration of terror, desire, fear, loathing, and longing.” – Saidiya V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection Chameleon is a performance project created by Jaamil Olawale Kosoko that examines the shapeshifting, illegible, and fugitive realities of Black diasporan people....

Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith present the New York City premiere of Body Comes Apart, an intimate duet based on a dynamic improvisational score. Lieber and Smith, who were nominated for a 2013 Bessie Award for Emerging...

Live Arts celebrates Women’s History Month with Dinner Party: 1960s-2000s which interprets themes present in second wave feminism including women at work, porn and the erotic, sex positivity, and more. Nostalgic cuisine and custom place settings recombine modern developments in domestic technology and industrial efficiencies. Utilizing...

NYC Premiere Highly acclaimed for her “fierce choreographic imagination” (New York Times), Netta Yerushalmy presents the New York premiere of the complete six-part encyclopedic series, Paramodernities, a multidisciplinary work that involves lectures, performances, and conversations.  The six installments rethink the canon of modern...

Open Company Classes with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company is rooted in the style of the Company as developed by Bill T. Jones and Janet Wong. Progressing from somatic floor work to standing exercises, technical and creative challenges culminate in lush, expressive phrase work.  

Presented as part of Women’s History Month Live Arts continues its Open Spectrum Community Dialogues, curated by culture creator Brian Tate of The Tate Group, providing space for reflection on the most vital issues facing communities today.

Developed by Bill T. Jones with Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong, Analogy Trilogy is based on oral histories and inspired by W.G. Sebald’s award-winning novel The Emigrants. Part One, Analogy/Dora: Tramontane, recounts the story of Dora Amelan, a French Jewish nurse, social worker, and World War II survivor. Part Two Analogy/Lance:...

World Premiere Darkness Odyssey Part 3, the final installment of Yamazaki’s Darkness Odyssey series, is a non-operatic celebration of the act of “becoming otherself.” Inspired by writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and butoh pioneer Tatsumi Hijikata’s notion of “dance of darkness,” the series explores the...

A Letter to My Nephew, Bill T. Jones’ latest dance theater work, is an intimate, impressionistic collage for nine dancers, setting a portrait of Jones’s beloved nephew Lance T. Briggs—a talented dancer who struggled with illness and addiction—against the political landscape of the present. Composed like a series of postcards...

The Cotillion is a multi-channel audio and video installation with live performance that explores ceremonial entrances into society. From re-entry into society after prison, to ‘entering society’ in debutante balls, to rituals of welcoming ancestors back to communities, this new work by Kaneza Schaal is as a companion piece to...

Last Audience is the newest work by the Bessie-award-winning collaborative group, a canary torsi. It is an immersive performance installation where audience members incarnate the work at each performance. The piece utilizes the structure of a traditional requiem mass as the inspiration to develop scores for the audience. Greetings, processions,...

Sassafrazz is a new evening-length dance inspired by the word sassafras: A dried root used for flavoring, early character based dance styles and flavor in Breaking and the privilege of maturing as a dancer in this form. With an original, improvisationally structured composition for 3 Breakers and 3...

Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, The New School, Arts , “home to one of the more progressive collegiate dance departments in New York” (New York Times), offers a unique undergraduate dance curriculum centered on recent developments in the field. These performances highlight new...

Radioactive Practice is the newest work by Juried Bessie award winning Illinois-based choreographer Abby Zbikowski, commissioned by New York Live Arts and set to premiere during their 2019-20 Season. This genre-bending dance for ten performers breaks down the physicality, socio-cultural functions and psychological states...

Bill T. Jones talks with Claudia Rankine, poet, essayist, playwright, and the editor of several anthologies, and Tracy K. Smith, poet and educator, who is currently serving as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States, an office she assumed in 2017. Claudia Rankine is the author of five collections...

Live Arts’ Fresh Tracks performance and residency program continues its commitment to bringing new voices to the forefront. Fresh Tracks artists present excerpts of new work in development. Featuring works from Dolores (Lola) Sanchez, Liana Conyers, J. Bouey, Emma Rose Brown, and Collin Ranf.

New York Live Arts’ daylong performance party celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall uprising and World Pride. Queer nightlife and art scene come together under one roof to serve up the city’s most colorful and fierce performance, music, and more for a multi-space, back-to-back party for the...