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Works & Process Announces the "Underground Uptown Dance Festival"

Company:
Works & Process

Works & Process at the Guggenheim presents the Underground Uptown Dance Festival, a festival of commissioned street and social dances taking place in the subterranean Frank Lloyd Wright-designed theater at the Guggenheim from January 10-16, 2024 and at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall on January 12.

Rare in the field of dance, let alone in the creators' traditions, beyond presenting fee, all projects will have received longitudinal support. With some spanning four years, across multiple residencies Works & Process will have provided living wage fees, 24/7 devoted studio access, adjacent housing, access to health care insurance enrollment, performance fees, and iterative performance opportunities. Inspired by the circular architecture of the Guggenheim, the cyphers prevalent in street dance, and social environments where these performing art traditions were germinated, the works being presented weave audiences and artists together. These commissions endeavor to amplify the innate qualities of dance to physically connect and facilitate the embodiment of joy and community.

"Directing attention and resources to dance communities often neglected by institutions of concert dance" – The New York Times

 

WORKS & PROCESS Uptown Dance Festival AT THE GUGGENHEIM

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Peter B. Lewis Theater, 071 Fifth Ave. New York, NY 10128

Choose-What-You-Pay tickets available at www.worksandprocess.org.

 

January 10

Kayla Farrish's Put Away the Fire, dear

 

January 11 

Pontus Lidberg's On the Nature of Rabbits

Taylor Stanley and Alec Knight

 

January 13 

Ladies of Hip-Hop: SpeakMyMind

 

January 14 

Lloyd Knight, Jack Ferver and Jeremy Jacob

Company Stefanie Batten Bland: Embarqued: Stories of Soil

 

January 15 

Passion Fruit Dance Company: Trapped by Tatiana Desardouin

Preeti Vasudevan and Amar Ramasar's Indian Letters

 

January 16 

ARRAY's LEAP: The Reckoning by Francesca Harper, music by Nona Hendryx

Kash Gaines' Caged Birds

 

Held in the Peter B. Lewis Theater, the Guggenheim's subterranean Frank Lloyd Wright–designed auditorium, the festival will feature projects including new work from Kayla Farrish, in conjunction with the Guggenheim Exhibition Going Dark, excerpts from Pontus Lidberg's On the Nature of Rabbits, Princess Lockerooo's The Fabulous Waack Dancers, the world premiere of Ladies of Hip-Hop's SpeakMyMind, excerpts from I Didn't Come to Stay, heralded by the New York Times as "An unforced crowd-pleaser, original and true to itself," and many more!

 

Kayla Farrish's Put Away the Fire, dear (in-process)

Jan 10, 7 pm

Choreographer Kayla Farrish's newest work maps the journey of marginalized characters taking the reins of their own narrative. A dance-theater work set to a score that explores Black American music, Put Away the Fire, deartakes Old Hollywood cinema techniques, such as thriller, film noir, romance, and musical, and revamps and remixes them for a live performance that intentionally disrupts oppressive tropes.

Presented in conjunction with the Guggenheim Exhibition Going Dark.

Supported with a Works & Process LaunchPAD residency at the Watermill Center, Put Away the Fire, dear is a 2023 New England Foundation for the Arts's National Dance Project grantee, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and Mellon Foundation and was commissioned and created, in part, with the support of The Joyce Theater Foundation's Creative Residencies Program made possible by lead funding from the Mellon Foundation.

 

Pontus Lidberg's On the Nature of Rabbits (highlights)

Taylor Stanley and Alec Knight (in-process)

Jan 11, 7 pm

Choreographer Pontus Lidberg shares his newest work exploring the resonance of the AIDS epidemic on dance. New York City Ballet dancers Taylor Stanley and Alec Knight showcase a first look at their new work. Denise Roberts Hurlin, Founding Director of Dancers Responding to AIDS, moderates the discussion.

See highlights of Pontus Lidberg's On the Nature of Rabbits, a La Biennale di Venezia commission and a Works & Process co-commission, prior to its Joyce Theater premiere on March 6th. Inspired by true-life events after the fall of the Berlin wall and at the peak of the AIDS epidemic, in a series of dreamlike scenes, Lidberg contemplates the relationship between childhood mementos and the nuances of desire, as well as the delicate balance between reality and imagination in a time of fear. Visuals by Emmy-Award winner Jason Carpenter add a playful and interactive layer to the dance.

New York City Ballet dancers Taylor Stanley and Alec Knight assembled a cast to start creation on work inspired by Larry Mitchell's The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions. Don't miss this first look at their creative process culminating from two Works & Process LaunchPAD residencies at Modern Accord Depot.

On the Nature of Rabbits was commissioned by La Biennale di Venezia, co-commissioned and co-produced by Works & Process and Works & Process LaunchPAD residency support by Bethany Arts Community, The Joyce Theater Foundation with major support generously provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and with the generous support of Orsolina 28 Art Foundation, Dalateatern Falun, The Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation, The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, and generous individuals.

 

Ladies of Hip-Hop

The Black Dancing Bodies: SpeakMyMind (premiere)

Jan 13, 3 and 7 pm

"Each woman's voice stands powerfully on its own." —Dance Enthusiast

Part of an ongoing performance and documentary effort focused on Black women in street and club dance culture, this session of The Black Dancing Bodies Project continues to explore the power of the "choreopoem," a word coined in 1975 by playwright and poet Ntozake Shange (for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf). In SpeakMyMind each member of the collective responds to the question, "If I could speak my mind, what would I say?" In this world premiere, experience new writings, music, and movement spanning dance styles from African to waacking, vogue, hip-hop, and house, all curated under the direction of Michele Byrd-McPhee.

SpeakMyMind was commissioned by Works & Process, developed in Works & Process LaunchPAD residencies at Bethany Arts Community (2022, 2023, and 2024) and Catskill Mountain Foundation (2022), and Office Hours Residency at The Kennedy Center (2023). Iterative performances have taken place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Jacob's Pillow, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the National Gallery of Art, SummerStage, Dancers Responding to AIDS Hudson Valley Dance Festival, and New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

SpeakMyMind is a 2023 New England Foundation for the Arts's National Dance Project grantee, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and Mellon Foundation.

 

Lloyd Knight, Jack Ferver, and Jeremy Jacob (in-process)

Company Stefanie Batten Bland: Embarqued: Stories of Soil (highlights)

Jan 14, 7 pm

Martha Graham Dance Company Principal Dancer Lloyd Knight shares a first look at an intimate and personal solo inspired by the women in his life, his mother and Martha Graham. Knight's work brings together research in the Martha Graham archive that was facilitated through a fellowship at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Jerome Robbins Dance Division and Works & Process LaunchPAD creative residencies with choreographer Jack Ferver and filmmaker Jeremy Jacob at Bridge Street Theatre, Modern Accord Depot, and Watermill Center. This in-process new work lays bare what it takes both physically and psychologically to pursue a life in dance and explores Knight's youth, upbringing, and what drew him initially to Graham from an early age.

See highlights from Company Stefanie Batten Bland's Embarqued: Stories of Soil. A ship mast rises from the stage and reaches toward both our past and our present—recalling slave ships, memorials, and monuments—as meanings unfurl through dance. This dance-theater work, performed by a cast of five, is based on an excavation of self and country that is expressed through textiles, skin tones, labor, land, humor, and moving bodies, offering rich storytelling and a visceral journey toward wholeness, connecting people and places through an unfolding time continuum. The work invites reflection of our shared history and interrogates our relationship with memorialization, revealing post-colonial foundations and mythologies.

Woven into the performances, Jerome Robbins Dance Division Curator Linda Murray moderates a discussion with Batten Bland, Knight, Ferver, and Jacob.

Embarqued: Stories of Soil received commissioning support from ArtYard and the Baryshnikov Arts Center. Embarqued was created through critical research and creative residencies provided by ArtYard, Duke Performances at Duke University, and The Yard in Chilmark, Massachusetts, in partnership with Martha's Vineyard Museum and Martha's Vineyard African American Heritage Trail. Embarqued was made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts's National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and Mellon Foundation. The project has received additional support from Jerome Robbins Foundation, New Music USA, and a Works & Process LaunchPAD residency at The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University.

 

Passion Fruit Dance Company: Trapped by Tatiana Desardouin (highlights)

Preeti Vasudevan & Amar Ramasar's Indian Letters (in-process)

Jan 15, 7 pm

New York–based choreographer Tatiana Desardouin and Passion Fruit Dance Company bring bold street and club dance styles to the stage. Trapped features moving testimony from four women of different backgrounds and life stories, revealing both their pain and paths to joy. While the piece explores difficult social issues faced by women, it conveys a broad message of hope and celebration and is an invitation to unfold and release mental blocks.

An immersive live and digital-theater project, Indian Letters is a collaboration between Preeti Vasudevan, Artistic Director of New York–based arts organization Thresh, and Amar Ramasar, a former principal dancer at the New York City Ballet. In this in-process showing, both dancers rediscover themselves through a dynamic dialogue of cultural exchange. By asking the question, "Where is home?" they cast new light on issues of race, assimilation, faith, and identity in the twenty-first century. 

Trapped was commissioned by Works & Process and premiered in the rotunda of the Solomon R. Guggenhiem Museum. Trapped was developed in a Works & Process Bubble residency at Bridge Street Theatre (2021) made possible through the generous support of the Mellon Foundation and Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Indian Letters has been developed in Works & Process LaunchPAD residencies at Catskill Mountain Foundation (2022 and 2023) and The Yard, in partnership with Circuit Arts (2023).

 

ARRAY's LEAP: The Reckoning by Francesca Harper, music by Nona Hendryx

Kash Gaines' Caged Birds (in-process)

Jan 16, 7 pm

Existing as a film commissioned by ARRAY's Law Enforcement Accountability Project (LEAP) and a live performance that premiered in 2022 at Works & Process at the Guggenheim, The Reckoning is choreographer and director Francesca Harper's response to the 2010 killing of 7-year-old Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones at the hands of Detroit law enforcement. In collaboration with composer Nona Hendryx, Harper has created an expressive historical record of injustice as she explores the relationship between erasure and commodification in the media's coverage of brutality against bodies of color. Dancers from Ailey II and FHP Collective perform in costumes by Elias Gurrola with lighting design by Itohan Edoloyi.

For many young New York City artists, the rambunctious dance tradition of showtime on the subway is their best opportunity to perform in front of a live audience. In tandem with the renegade act of public dance is always the possibility of confrontation and arrest, risks that performer/documentarian Kash Gaines's cast of artists know all too well. At this in-process sharing of Kash's new project Caged Birds, commissioned by Works & Process, you'll hear intimate stories of dancers' perilous encounters with law enforcement inside and outside the MTA system and see the craft they've honed performing on the city's biggest stage. This performance offers proof that these uncaged birds truly can fly.

The Reckoning was commissioned by ARRAY's Law Enforcement Accountability Project (LEAP), a propulsive fund dedicated to empowering activists to disrupt the code of silence that exists around police aggression and misconduct. The development of the live performance of The Reckoning was supported by and developed in Works & Process LaunchPAD residencies at Bethany Arts Community (2022, 2023, and 2024) with the collaboration of Gabri Christa and the Movement Lab at Barnard College.

Caged Birds was commissioned by Works & Process, and developed in Works & Process LaunchPAD residencies at Bethany Arts Community (2023 and 2024) and Bridge Street Theatre (2023), and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency).

 

WORKS & PROCESS Uptown Dance Festival AT LINCOLN CENTER

Lincoln Center Alice Tully Hall, 1941 Broadway at, W 65th St, New York, NY 10023

Choose-What-You-Pay tickets available at https://www.lincolncenter.org/series/lincoln-center-presents/underground-uptown-dance-festival-947.

 

Friday, January 12, 2024 at 6pm

• Les Ballet Afrik: New York Is Burning by Omari Wiles
• It's Showtime NYC! – Pyramid
• Ladies of Hip-Hop: SpeakMyMind
• LayeRhythm
• The Missing Element featuring The Beatbox House
• Princess Lockerooo's The Fabulous Waack Dancers: The Big Show
• MasterZ at Work Dance Family: ALL INCLUSIVE by Courtney "Balenciaga" Washington
• Rokafella and Kwikstep's Behind the Groove
• Underground Uptown Ball - Leggoh JohVera, DJ BelindZz, and Hype Kitty

Don't miss this one night takeover of Alice Tully Hall, with activations across the hall. Ephrat Asherie Dance, Omari Wiles' Les Ballet Afrik, It's Showtime NYC!, Ladies of Hip-Hop, Courtney "Balenciaga" Washington's MasterZ at Work Dance Family, The Missing Element featuring The Beatbox House, and The Big Show by Princess Lockerooo's The Fabulous Waack Dancers take to the stage. Simultaneously, in the lobby Kwikstep and Rokafella's Behind the Groove, Mai Lê Hô's LayeRhythm, and the Underground Uptown Ball call for all to jump into the cypher.

Alice Tully Hall – Club and Social Dancing in the Morgan Stanley Lobby

 

Behind the Groove with Kwikstep and Rokafella

Since 2009, hip-hop legends Kwikstep and Rokafella have curated Behind the Groove, a dance party that invites the community to freestyle to classic dance music without the pressure of competition or bar culture, allowing the dancers to organically engage in social exchange on the floor. Regularly held at the Nuyorican Poets Café, the party will come to the Morgan Stanley Lobby at Alice Tully Hall during the café's renovation. See popping, breaking, locking, uprocking, house, lite feet, and krumping share the stage.

Kwikstep and Rokafella have received Works & Process LaunchPAD residency support at The Pocantico Center (2023).

 

LayeRhythm

Embodying the continuum of concert and social dance, LayeRhythm, led by Mai Lê Hô, interweaves a singular mix of play-based freestyle dance, live music, and audience interaction, celebrating the vibrancy of street and club dance cultures. The evening will feature improvisations by musicians, dancers, and emcees, captivating the young and old, from theater- to clubgoers.

LayeRhythm has received Works & Process LaunchPAD residency support at The Church (2023), Sag Harbor (2023) and Catskill Mountain Foundation (2024).

Underground Uptown Ball with Leggoh JohVera, DJ BelindZz, and Hype Kitty

Don't just spectate, participate. After seeing the ballroom legends in Les Ballet Afrik and MasterZ at Work Dance Family perform on stage, go ahead and pop, dip, and spin over to the Morgan Stanley Lobby for the Underground Uptown Ball organized by Hype Kitty. Celebrate LGBTQIA+ culture/individuals and honor the skills and style that have made ballroom the cultural force it is today, while also honoring contemporary dancers of the form. Bling out your heels, bring on the realness, and get ready to "werk" it with DJ BelindzZ and commentating by Leggoh JohVera. Contestants will serve their freshest looks on the runway in four categories: Runway, Face, OTA, and Best Dressed.

 

Alice Tully Hall – Starr Stage

Ladies of Hip-Hop

The Black Dancing Bodies – SpeakMyMind (highlights)

"Each woman's voice stands powerfully on its own." —Dance Enthusiast

Part of an ongoing performance and documentary effort focused on Black women in street and club dance culture, this session of The Black Dancing Bodies Project continues to explore the power of the "choreopoem"—a word coined in 1975 by playwright and poet Ntozake Shange in for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf. In this presentation, each member of the collective responds to the question, "If I could speak my mind, what would I say?" A day before SpeakMyMind's world premiere at the Guggenheim, experience highlights of the work featuring new writings, music, and movement that spans dance styles from African to waacking, vogue, hip-hop, and house­—all curated under the direction of Michele Byrd-McPhee.

SpeakMyMind was commissioned by Works & Process, developed in Works & Process LaunchPAD residencies at Bethany Arts Community (2022, 2023, and 2024) and Catskill Mountain Foundation (2022), and Office Hours Residency at The Kennedy Center (2023). Iterative performances have taken place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Jacob's Pillow, Lincoln Center, the National Gallery of Art, SummerStage, Dancers Responding to AIDS Hudson Valley Dance Festival, and New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

SpeakMyMind is a 2023 New England Foundation for the Arts's National Dance Project grantee, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and Mellon Foundation.

 

Ephrat Asherie Dance and NYC Club Legends

UNDERSCORED (highlights)

A living archive of five generations of New York City club dancers, UNDERSCORED is a multifaceted project rooted in the stories and memories of the city's underground club heads. Commissioned by Works & Process and created by the dancers of Ephrat Asherie Dance and club legends ranging in age from 28 to 80, UNDERSCOREDis a collaboration that explores the ever-changing physical and musical landscape of New York's underground dance community. Building on the intergenerational transference of knowledge and culturally reflective movement that happens night after night on dance floors across the city, UNDERSCORED celebrates the lived experiences, stories, and vibes of seminal parties, including David Mancuso's The Loft, Larry Levan's Paradise Garage and Timmy Regisford's Shelter as well as the perspectives of legends Archie Burnett, Michele Saunders, and Brahms "Bravo" LaFortune.

UNDERSCORED received lead commissioning and development support by Works & Process, for world premiere at the Guggenheim following Works & Process LaunchPAD residencies at Catskill Mountain Foundation (2022), Bridge Street Theatre (2021), Kaatsbaan Cultural Park (2020), and the Guggenheim Museum. Additional residency support provided by City University of New York Dance Initiative, LUMBERYARD, and The Yard. 

UNDERSCORED is a 2022 New England Foundation for the Arts's National Dance Project grantee, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Foundation and Mellon Foundation. This project is made possible in part by a grant from the Association of Performing Arts Professionals for a residency at The Jay and Linda Grunin Center, made possible through support from Mellon Foundation. UNDERSCORED is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Works & Process in partnership with ArtPower at University of California San Diego, The Momentary, and The Yard. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

 

The MasterZ at Work Dance Family

ALL INCLUSIVE by Courtney "Balenciaga" Washington

A legend within the ballroom community, founder of the Kiki House of Juicy Couture, leader of the House of Balenciaga, and the 2022 Latex Ball's Avis Penda'vis Angel Award winner, Black trans femme choreographer Courtney "Balenciaga" Washington creates dances that are a representation of resiliency, and which foster community in under-resourced areas of Brooklyn. Her Works & Process commission ALL INCLUSIVE fuses street dance, street jazz, ballroom, vogue, and hip-hop. Informed by her own experience as a queer teenager who found refuge from teasing in dance, the work conveys how her gender transition spurred transformative emotional, creative, and physical liberation.

ALL INCLUSIVE was commissioned by Works & Process and developed in Works & Process LaunchPAD residencies at The Pocantico Center (2023), Bethany Arts Community (2022), and Kaatsbaan Cultural Center (2021). Past performances have taken place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Lincoln Center, OTA Weekly, Jacob's Pillow, SummerStage, and Dancers Responding to AIDS Fire Island Dance Festival and with NY PopsUp in The Oculus and Coney Island.

 

Les Ballet Afrik

New York Is Burning by Omari Wiles (highlights)

Ballroom community legend and House of Oricci founding father Omari Wiles brings ball culture to Lincoln Center with New York Is Burning, featuring Wiles's AfrikFusion, fusing traditional African dances and afrobeat with house dance and vogue. The 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning received critical acclaim for its depiction of the New York drag ball scene and of voguing as a powerful expression of personal pride in the face of racism, homophobia, and the stigma of the AIDS crisis. Just as Paris Is Burning did for New York in the 1980s, New York Is Burningreflects the aspirations, desires, and yearnings of a diverse group of dancers in a city beset by health, racial, and financial crises. Commissioned by Works & Process prior to the pandemic as an homage to Paris Is Burning on the documentary's 30th anniversary, Wiles's work centers the artists for whom his dance company serves as a surrogate family.

New York Is Burning was commissioned by Works & Process and received Works & Process bubble residencies at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park (2020) and Catskill Mountain Foundation (2021), and a Works & Process LaunchPAD residency at The Church, Sag Harbor in partnership with Guild Hall (2022). The work premiered at the Guggenheim and has been featured at Jacob's Pillow, New Victory Theater, SummerStage, and American Dance Festival.

New York Is Burning is a 2022 New England Foundation for the Arts's National Dance Project Finalist.

 

Princess Lockerooo's The Fabulous Waack Dancers: The Big Show (premiere)

In the 1970s, a dance form called waacking was born in the underground gay clubs of Los Angeles. Members of the gay community risked their lives to perform such an effeminate, expressive style of dance at a time when being openly gay often resulted in violence and imprisonment. The dance was popularized on Soul Train by Tyrone Proctor and brought to the spotlight on the Diana Ross Tour thanks to Billy Goodson. With the AIDS crisis, waacking became nearly extinct. Today the art form has been re-born as a booming social media sensation and global queer rights movement. In the premiere of The Big Show, performed by The Fabulous Waack Dancers, Princess Lockerooo, the "Queen of Waacking," honors her mentor, pioneering queer Black waack dancer and Soul Train legend, Tyrone Proctor, who died in 2020, and carries on his legacy through the dance he championed.

The Fabulous Waack Dancers's The Big Show by Princess Lockerooo received lead commissioning and development support with Works & Process LaunchPAD residencies at Bridge Street Theatre (2022), Watermill Center (2023), and The Pocantico Center (2023), for premiere at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The work is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Works & Process in partnership with ArtPower at UC San Diego, and REDCAT. The Creation & Development Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Foundation and Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency).

 

It's Showtime NYC! 

Pyramid by Cal Hunt and Johnathan "Akuma" Moore (In-Process)

New Yorkers are, by nature, archaeologists. Be it through graffiti, hieroglyphics, or freestyle dance on the street, lived stories are always being shared with those willing to pause and take in the messages. Commissioned by Works & Process, this in-process performance of Pyramid features It's Showtime NYC!, a company of dancers with a history of performing on New York's streets and subways, in collaboration with composer and cellist Johnathan "Akuma" Moore.

Both the original musical composition and dance work embody an artistic trade-off, representing a collaboration between composer and company dancer as each investigates the notion, "This is how you sound to me." Moore's composition animates each dancer's daily struggles and triumphs as they become live building blocks of the pyramid. Then through the pyramid's deconstruction, choreographer and It's Showtime NYC! Artistic Director Cal Hunt questions, "How do these stories get back into perspective?" By the end of the performance, Moore incorporates layered electronic loops and innovative techniques typically employed by funk bassists into his cello composition, which free up the musician, allowing him to join the performance as a bonebreaker, or flexN artist.

Pyramid was commissioned by Works & Process and has been developed in a Works & Process LaunchPAD residency at Bethany Arts Community (2023) and is in residence at NYC PARKS's Herbert Von King Cultural Center in Bed-Stuy, where the work will also be performed on January 13.

 

The Missing Element featuring The Beatbox House

Fusing awe-inspiring street dancers from the krump, flexN, and breaking communities with the virtuosic music-making of the world champion beatboxers in The Beatbox House, The Missing Element is a culmination of what happens when performing art forms that traditionally compete with one another collaborate.

The Missing Element was commissioned by Works & Process and developed in Works & Process bubble residencies at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park (2020 and 2021). Past performances have taken place at the Guggenheim Museum, Guild Hall, Jacob's Pillow Gala, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Little Island, NY PopsUp with Amy Schumer, and the Guggenheim Bilbao's 25th Anniversary, SummerStage, and the National Gallery of Art.

 

The Works & Process Underground Uptown Dance Festival is part of JanArtsNYC, one of the city's largest and most influential arts gatherings for which more than 45,000 performing arts leaders, artists, and enthusiasts from across the globe converge in New York.

Championing creative process from studio-to-stage, Works & Process has made a long-term investment in all of the artists and projects featured in the festival. Recognizing that presenting alone is not enough, all projects have received sequenced Works & Process LaunchPAD and bubble residency support providing industry-leading residency and performance fees, residencies with 24/7 studio space, on-site housing, transportation, and health insurance enrollment access. Celebrating the iterative nature of live performances, the public has been invited to explore steps in the creative process through public presentations at residency centers as well as in New York City at the Guggenheim, Lincoln Center, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and SummerStage and in venues nationally as commissions start to tour. These commissions endeavor to amplify the innate qualities of dance to physically connect and facilitate the embodiment of joy and community.