HOME: DEPARTURE AND RETURN to Launch 92NY Harkness Mainstage 2026/27 Season

The 92nd Street Y, New York will present Home: Departure and Return, the Harkness Mainstage Series 2026/27 season, unfolding at the threshold between home and elsewhere, tradition and change, belonging and becoming. This season's artists push at the borders of identity, culture, and tradition, asking what it means to leave home, return to it, or build it again. Drawing on dance forms shaped by migration and exchange, they reimagine inherited traditions with urgency and energy. Performances are in the historic Kaufmann Concert Hall, Buttenwieser Hall at the Arnhold Center, and outside these halls, as new transformed spaces in 92NY's building become part of the performance. Select programs are also available to stream for a limited time following the performance date.

The season opens with Ballet Hispánico New York performing excerpts from Eduardo Vilaro's Buscando a Juan (Looking for Juan); Marianela Boán's Reactor Antígona (Antigone Reactor); and Pedro Ruiz's Guajira, along with the world premiere of a documentary directed by Nel Shelby. Filmed in Cuba, the documentary captures Pedro Ruiz's process creating a new work on Malpaso Dance Company. The season closes with 92NY's inaugural Dance on Film Festival, showcasing a platform that knows no boundaries.

Home also features Christopher Williams, Johnnie Cruise Mercer and FLOCK bringing premieres to our stage;Doug Varone and Dancers - a longtime Harkness Dance Center resident company - return to celebrate their 40th anniversary; American Repertory Ballet makes their 92NY debut with works by Lar Lubovitch, Ethan Stiefel and a commission by Yue Yin; Ephrat Asherie Dance presents a unique collaboration with animator Mo Willems; Trisha Brown Dance Company takes over multiple 92NY spaces for an evening that includes performance, installation and video; and Bridgman | Packer Dance makes their 92NY debut with Ghost Factory, their latest work.

The 2026/27 season includes two festivals in addition to the new Dance on Film Festival. The Uptown Rhythm Dance Festival returns with a world premiere from former Harkness Artist in Residence Naomi Funaki, followed by two evenings with Art Bath, expanding from its original vision to encompass additional art forms like literature and visual arts. The Future Dance Festival, now in its sixth season, continues to present new talent in performance and on film.

'Home begins with a question that feels both timeless and especially resonant right now: What does it mean to have a home? In a moment when issues of migration, immigration, borders, and belonging are never far from public conversation, the artists in Home respond to the idea of fixed boundaries with movement,' comments Alison Manning, Co-Executive Director, 92NY Harkness Dance Center. 'Their work explores how identity, culture, and tradition are carried across geographies and generations, and how home can be preserved, reimagined, or rebuilt when the ground beneath us keeps shifting.'

Manning goes on to note, 'This theme feels deeply connected to the history of the 92nd Street Y itself. For more than 90 years, 92NY has been a home for dance artists, including modern dance pioneers and visionary creators who were not always welcomed or supported elsewhere. That legacy of artistic risk, cultural exchange, and creative refuge continues to shape who we are today, as we invite artists and audiences alike to consider how we build, carry, and redefine home.'

Home: Departure and Return

Performance Schedule

RETURN TO CUBA

A World Premiere Film Directed by Nel Shelby
Featuring Malpaso Dance Company and Pedro Ruiz
With a Live Performance by Ballet Hispánico New York
In Person - Kaufmann Concert Hall
Sat, Sep 19, 7 pm, from $45 / $20 student
Streaming
Sun, Sep 20 12 pm - Thu, Sep 24, 12 pm, $20

Malpaso Dance Company is one of contemporary dance's great success stories - a Cuban ensemble known for extraordinary technical brilliance, musicality, and expressive power. Since its founding in 2012, Malpaso has become a vital force on the global stage, commissioning and performing works by Ronald K. Brown, Trey McIntyre, Aszure Barton, and more.

For the Harkness Mainstage Series Opening Night, the company was to appear in the world premiere of a new 92NY commission by Bessie Award winner Pedro Ruiz. Ruiz was to travel to Havana to create the work in close collaboration with Malpaso's dancers before bringing it to New York.

Current visa barriers have made that impossible.

Rather than allow those barriers to end the project, 92NY continued to support the work. Filmmaker Nel Shelby traveled to Cuba to document Ruiz's creative process with Malpaso. The resulting documentary offers an intimate portrait of a company whose artistry and resilience remain undiminished. Part documentary, part act of cultural solidarity, the film will premiere as part of our Opening Night.

Dance has always carried human connection across boundaries. At a time when artistic exchange across borders is increasingly fragile, this project affirms the necessity of sustaining international collaboration, especially when it is most difficult.

Joining our Opening Night in celebration and support of the project is Ballet Hispánico New York, the nation's leading Latino dance company and the largest cultural institution of its kind in the United States. Recognized by the Ford Foundation as one of America's Cultural Treasures, the organization stands as a major force in contemporary dance in New York City, elevating the voices of Latino artists across the nation and the world. Under the leadership of Artistic Director & CEO Eduardo Vilaro, Ballet Hispánico serves as a catalyst for imagination, redefining how contemporary dance is seen, heard, and understood through its repertory, training, and community programs.

Bringing their extraordinary artistry to the evening, the company performs a program honoring three Cuban and Cuban American choreographers whose work has made a profound mark on American dance. The performance features excerpts from Eduardo Vilaro's Buscando a Juan (Looking for Juan); Marianela Boán's Reactor Antígona (Antigone Reactor); and concludes with Pedro Ruiz's Guajira.

Johnnie Cruise Mercer: The Good News Suite

Featuring TheREDprojectNYC Movement Ensemble
In Person - Buttenwieser Hall
Fri & Sat, Oct 16 & 17, 7 pm, from $45 / $20 student

Home - the place where you were held, and where you return to begin again. With The Good News Suite, Johnnie Cruise Mercer draws on his upbringing in the Black Baptist church to create a work rooted in memory, ritual, and shared experience. Inspired by Bible scriptures passed down through childhood, these choreographies are crafted to guide communities through grief, and toward the possibility of release.

No two performances are the same. The Good News Suite shifts in response to each space and the people who gather there, taking shape as both performance and communal experience. At 92NY, Mercer premieres The Unforced Rhythms of Grace, a captivating new ensemble work for Black movement and vocal artists, grounded in contemporary gospel music and built from deeply embodied testimony, rhythm, and collective energy. Each night will feature guest artists from across New York's Black dance community. Mercer also shares a new version of his ever-evolving solo work, Mercies of a Butterfly.

A former 92NY Harkness Artist in Residence and 2022 Mainstage Artist, Mercer returns home to the stage where so many of the great artists of American modern dance found a sense of belonging while they expanded what dance can hold, and who it is for. The experiences he creates are immersive and shared, erasing the borders between the performers and audiences; experiences Dance Enthusiast describes as 'tenderly moving and immensely rewarding ... leaving the theater feeling full, and above all, revived.'

Movement artists: Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Paulina Meneses, T J Jacobs, Paris Jones, Demietrius Burns
Instrumentalists: Jean Charlot, drums, Young Denzel, guitar, Robert McSweeney, horn
Vocal artist: Sekayi Williams, and additional artists.
Christopher Williams

Spectre de la Rose (World Premiere)
La Rhétorique des Dieux (New York Premiere)

In Person - Buttenwieser Hall
Thu & Fri, Oct 29 & 30, 7 pm, from $45 / $20 student
What does it mean to engage with traditions of bygone eras, and reimagine them for the here and now?

Bessie Award winner and Guggenheim Fellow Christopher Williams, hailed by The New York Times as 'one of the most exciting choreographic voices out there' and dubbed 'the downtown prodigy' by The New Yorker, premières a sixth work in his ongoing Queering the Canon: Reimagining the Ballets Russes series, bringing a thrilling double bill program to 92NY that reshapes inherited traditions with rigor, wit, and astonishing originality.

In his Spectre de la Rose, a romantic reverie becomes something more fluid, gliding across thresholds of gender, perception, and tradition. Commissioned for world première at 92NY, the work reimagines Fokine's 1911 Ballets Russes classic starring Karsavina and Nijinsky, in which a young woman dreams of dancing with the spirit of a souvenir rose from her first ball. Williams refracts the original scenario through a prismatic queer lens inspired by elements of contemporary ballroom culture, drawing on its traditions mingling fantasy and realness in performance. Set to an array of musical selections including Carl Maria von Weber's Aufforderung zum Tanz (Invitation to the Dance) and sound design by Tei Blow, the work features designs by longtime collaborators Joe Levasseur (lighting) and recent Bessie Award winner Andrew Jordan (costumes).

Set to excerpts from Denis Gaultier's eponymous suite for Baroque lute, La Rhétorique des Dieux foregrounds the mythic figure of Phaëthon - cast down to the realm of mortals from that of the divine - exploring his encounters with an array of figures from Greco-Roman mythology appearing in unexpected contemporary guises. Presented at 92NY for its New York première, the work also features lighting by Joe Levasseur along with costumes by Andrew Jordan and Williams.

At 92NY, long a home for artists expanding the language of dance, Williams engages tradition head on, reshaping it into something captivating, expansive, and entirely his own.

Bridgman | Packer Dance

Ghost Factory at 92NY
In Person - Buttenwieser Hall
Fri & Sat, Nov 20 & 21, 7 pm, from $45 / $20 student

What lingers in a space after we leave, and what happens when those traces begin to move? For more than 40 years, Art Bridgman and Myrna Packer have made work unlike anyone else: just the two of them onstage, merging dance and film into a singular, ever-evolving language. Today, their boundary-blurring dances remain as inventive as ever.

In Ghost Factory, their latest work, live performance and video collide in a world of shifting perspectives and haunted spaces. Inspired by the abandoned factories and residents of Johnson City, New York, the piece conjures a landscape where human stories cling to architecture, and images flicker with the presence of those who came before. Dancers move through and against projected environments that fracture, multiply, and dissolve, creating a mesmerizing interplay of illusion and physicality.

Created with longtime collaborators including filmmaker Peter Bobrow, lighting designer Frank DenDanto III, Costume Designer Anna-Alisa Belous, and composer/sound designer Ansel Bobrow, Ghost Factory unfolds as a fully immersive experience. Extending into and through 92NY's building is Places with Hidden Stories, an accompanying audio-visual installation that brings hidden histories from Johnson City and a Lower East Side tenement into vivid focus.

Doug Varone and Dancers 40th Anniversary Celebration

In Person - Buttenwieser Hall
Fri & Sat, Dec 4 & 5, 7 pm, from $45 / $20 student

A homecoming, decades in the making. Doug Varone and Dancers returns to 92NY to mark its 40th anniversary and the closing of a chapter, celebrating a long and generative relationship with the place the company called home from 2007 to 2015. Over those years, as the Harkness Dance Center resident company, Varone brought his signature blend of kinetic intensity, emotional depth, and formal clarity to our stages, including the creation of the Harkness Dance Festival's Stripped/Dressed series, inviting audiences into the creative process before performance.

Founded in 1986, the company has built a body of work defined by its humanity, musicality and expansive reach, spanning concert dance, theater, opera, and film. With 11 Bessie Awards and performances across the US and internationally, Varone's choreography is celebrated for its physical rigor and emotional resonance, as well as its ability to forge a direct connection between dancers and audiences.

This anniversary program draws from the company's rich repertory, offering a look across decades of work that continues to evolve. Part of the Home season, this return is both a reflection and a renewal: an artist revisiting a place of deep history and bringing it into the present.

FLOCK

The Designer (US Premiere)
In Person - Buttenwieser Hall
Sat, Jan 9, 7 pm
Sun, Jan 10, 2 pm
From $45 / $20 student

Dancemakers. Rulebreakers. Artistic soulmates. German co-choreographers Alice Klock and Florian Lochner create work of striking physicality and emotional depth - 'like watching an agave bloom in the fluctuating luminescence of a desert sky' (Chicago Reader).

Following the New York premiere of their first ensemble touring show at 92NY in 2023 and a Summer Intensive in 2026, FLOCK returns home to our stage, bringing a mesmerizing US premiere. In The Designer, a fashion designer conjures a world where his creations come to life, each garment embodying an archetype of the Tarot's Major Arcana, from the innocence of The Fool to the shadow of Death, to the yearning of The Lovers. What begins in beauty and control spirals into obsession, as the designer confronts whether he shapes his creations, or is consumed by them. Featuring FLOCK's signature partnering and theatrical storytelling, the work comes to vivid life through visionary costumes by Hogan McLaughlin, transforming each dancer into a living embodiment of the cards.

Part of the Home season, FLOCK's return marks an ongoing artistic exchange; an international company crossing borders and deepening roots, finding their creative home at 92NY. As a part of the Home season closing, they return for a screening of their film Holy Grail at the Dance On Film Festival, June 18.

American Repertory Ballet

Works by Yue Yin, Lar Lubovitch, and Ethan Stiefel
In Person - Buttenwieser Hall
Thu & Fri, Feb 4 & 5, 7 pm, from $45 / $20 student

American Repertory Ballet (ARB) makes its 92NY debut with a program that brings together work by Lar Lubovitch, Ethan Stiefel, and a commission by former Harkness Artist in Residence Yue Yin.

This is a chance to see a rising generation of ballet dancers at a moment of exploration, taking on new directions in the form while grounded in its classical roots. Curated by American Repertory Ballet's Artistic Director Samantha Dunster, the program includes a work by Yue Yin, following her sold-out season at 92NY last year. Known for a choreographic voice shaped by Chinese classical dance and her own experience moving between worlds, her work has a voice all its own. Set alongside this are works by Lar Lubovitch, a defining figure in American dance and another former 92NY artist, and Ethan Stiefel, ARB Artist in Residence, whose career spans the highest levels of ballet as both performer, film star, and choreographer. Together, they bring a sense of range and continuity, linking generations of artists shaping the form.

Experience new work alongside established voices, brought to life by a company on the rise and dancers ready to meet the moment.

92NY, Works & Process at Guggenheim New York, and Art Bath Present

Uptown Rhythm Dance Festival

92NY Events co-curated by Caleb Teicher

In Person - Buttenwieser Hall
Tue, Mar 2, 7 pm, from $45 / $20 student
Wed, Mar 3, 7 pm, from $45 / $20 student
Thu, Mar 4, 7 pm, from $45 / $20 student
Fri, Mar 5, 7 pm, from $45 / $20 student

'This terrific new percussive dance series' (The New York Times) returns. Across seven days, tap, percussive dance, music, poetry, and visual art converge in a festival that treats rhythm as a shared language, moving across cultures, traditions, and art forms.

Uptown Rhythm opens March 1 with a Social Dance Party in the Guggenheim Museum rotunda, hosted by Works & Process, then moves to 92NY for the world premiere of a new evening-length work by Harkness Artist in Residence Naomi Funaki on March 2 and 3.

On March 4 and 5, Uptown Rhythm transforms 92NY into a living, breathing salon - part performance, part gathering, part art party, co-presented by Art Bath and co-curated by Caleb Teicher. Dancers respond to musicians, poets fold into rhythm, collaborations unfold in real time. You're up close with the artists, moving from stage to studio and back again as the distance between audience and performer begins to dissolve.

The festival closes March 7 at the Guggenheim.

Future Dance Festival

In Person - Buttenwieser Hall

Thu, Apr 8, 7 pm (film screening), from $45 / $20 artist/student
Fri, Apr 9, 7 pm (Showing A), from $45 / $20 artist/student
Sat, Apr 10, 7 pm (Showing B), from $45 / $20 artist/student
Livestream, $20
Thurs, Apr 8, 7 pm - Mon, Apr 12, 7 pm (film)
Fri, Apr 9, 7 pm - Tues, Apr 13, 12 pm (Showing A)
Sat, Apr 10, 7 pm - Wednesday, Apr 14, 7 pm (Showing B)

Before they were legends, artists like Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, and José Limón found a home at 92NY. Today, the Future Dance Festival continues that legacy, spotlighting the next generation of trailblazers in choreography and dance filmmaking.

Now in its sixth year, the festival has become an important incubator for new talent and new work in dance - a place where emerging artists explore their unique voices through bold, original work. As part of the Home season, the festival continues to bring together emerging artists across states, countries, backgrounds, and forms.

For the first time, the festival opens with a live, in-person screening of its Dance Film Program on Thursday, followed by two nights of live performances on Friday and Saturday.

Curated by a panel of industry leaders, the Future Dance Festival connects emerging choreographers and filmmakers with today's artistic decision-makers. It's a festival grounded in a clear purpose: to support the future of dance by championing its most promising creators, and to offer audiences a first look at the artists and ideas that will shape the future of the form.

Ephrat Asherie Dance

It's Just a Smatter of Time
In Person - Kaufmann Concert Hall
Sat, May 1, 7 pm, from $45 / $20 student
Streaming
Sun, May 2, 12 pm - Thu, May 6, 12 pm, $20
A drawing starts to move. A rhythm takes shape. And suddenly, a world appears!

In this exuberant evening, Bessie Award-winning choreographer Ephrat 'Bounce' Asherie brings together her electrifying company for a riveting program including the premiere of It's Just a Smatter of Time. A special collaboration with beloved artist and author Mo Willems and Grammy Award-winning ensemble Third Coast Percussion, It's Just a Smatter of Time is a playful, deeply imaginative exploration of rhythm, movement, and visual storytelling, and an invitation for audiences of all ages to join the conversation!

The collaboration began at 92NY, where Asherie has long been part of the artistic fabric - as a former Artist in Residence and a collaborator across performance and arts education. After inviting Mo Willems to hear Third Coast Percussion in concert here, the spark for It's Just a Smatter of Time was set in motion.

Willems' drawings unfold in dialogue with Third Coast Percussion's richly layered score, while Asherie's choreography - deeply rooted in street and club dance - brings Third Coast's other-worldly sounds and Willems captivating visuals to life.

Co-presented with Tisch Music

Trisha Brown Dance Company

In Person - Kaufmann Concert Hall
Thu, May 27, 7 pm, from $45 / $20 student
Streaming
Fri, May 28, 12 pm - Tue, Jun 1, 12 pm, $20

One of the most influential choreographers of the postmodern era, Trisha Brown redefined where and how dance could exist - onstage, offstage, and everywhere in between. This special, immersive evening activates the newly renovated spaces of 92NY as it invites you into her world.

The experience unfolds as you move through the building in small groups, encountering Brown's work up close and from multiple vantage points - part performance, part installation, part living archive.

In the Weill Art Gallery, Floor of the Forest (1970) transforms the space into a sculptural landscape of ropes and suspended clothing, where dancers climb, weave, and hover between gravity and release. In the round in Warburg Lounge, Locus Trio (1975) reveals Brown's intricate, radical approach to structure and movement. Elsewhere, video, live performance and unexpected encounters animate the building, echoing Brown's long history of creating work in galleries, on rooftops, and in public spaces.

The journey continues in Kaufmann Concert Hall and the performance shifts to the proscenium stage, where the dancers transition the audience from immersive experience into Brown's more formal work. Three works - Line Up (1976), Water Motor (1978), and Working Title (1985) - offer a sense of the range that made her one of the defining artists of postmodern dance. It's a rare chance to experience Brown's work across scales, settings, and modes of attention - an 'only at 92NY' encounter with one of the great choreographic minds of the last century.

Presented in New York's historic home for modern dance, the evening reflects Brown's enduring connection to the city and her radical reimagining of space, place, and performance.

Dance on Film Festival

Tobin Del Cuore, FLOCK, Sagí Amir Gros
In Person - Buttenwieser Hall
Fri, Jun 18, 3 pm, 5 pm, and 7 pm, $30 / $20 artist/student

Dance has never lived in just one place. It lives onstage, onscreen, and everywhere movement meets the camera. With the launch of the Dance On Film Festival, 92NY expands its long-standing commitment to dance across forms. As dance artists continue to experiment with how choreography is made, seen, and shared, this new festival offers a space to explore what becomes possible when dance moves beyond the stage. Featuring documentaries, short films, and boundary-pushing collaborations, Dance On Film brings audiences closer to the artists shaping how dance is experienced now.

Program

3 pm Screening:

Three Films by Sagí Amir Gros:
Silent Force
Them
Your Silence is Loud

5 pm Screening:

FLOCK Films: Holy Grail
Filmmaker: Malcolm Wesley
Dancers: Florian Lochner, Alice Klock, Kevin Shannon, Emilie Leriche, Samuel Antinelli
Music: Angus MacRae

7 pm Screening:

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