Garth Fagan Dance to Return to The Joyce Theater for 55th Anniversary

Garth Fagan Dance will return to The Joyce Theater for six performances, November 4-8, 2026, in its 55th anniversary season. The engagement follows Garth Fagan's 2025 Bessie Award for Lifetime Achievement and the company's last Joyce run in 2024.

The program, themed around hope and optimism, features two New York City premieres. Priestess Hill, by Artistic Director Norwood "PJ" Pennewell, is set to Philip Glass's 'Days and Nights in Rocinha'. The program closes with Messages To The Storm by Executive Director Natalie Rogers-Cropper, inspired by Maya Angelou's line "every storm runs out of rain." "Our art form creates a place where a person can be invigorated," Rogers-Cropper said. "It's exhilarating - it leaves you willing to go through life, to face adversity with beauty and creation."

They join two works by Founder and Distinguished Artistic Director Emeritus Garth Fagan: 1981/1983 Prelude: Discipline is Freedom, in which audiences have watched young dancers bloom and seasoned dancers find new nuance, and the 1985 Never Top 40 (Jukebox), set to music ranging from Puccini's "Nessun Dorma" to Keith Jarrett's rendition of "Over the Rainbow."

Founded in Rochester in 1970, Garth Fagan Dance is known for Fagan Technique, a movement language blending modern, postmodern, Afro-Caribbean, and ballet. Fagan, the Tony Award-winning choreographer of Disney's The Lion King, has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award, and Jamaica's Order of Distinction. The company has toured the U.S. and the world for more than 55 years and remains one of Rochester's most enduring cultural institutions.