Harlem Stage Adds Additional Highlights to E-MOVES FESTIVAL

Harlem Stage has unveiled further highlights for its iconic signature series, celebrating dance - E-Moves Festival: A Movement. Beginning May 8 and running through June 14, this year's presentation of the annual series will feature an exciting lineup in dance and will mark the culmination of  Harlem Stage's 2024/2025 Season “When We Are Heard” - the inaugural season of the institution's new CEO & Artistic Director, Dr. Indira Etwaroo. 

For more than 25 years, E-Moves has convened the world's leading choreographers, dancers, dance companies, and artists of the Global Majority in an exploration of movement and message.

With over a month of programming planned, the 2025 E-Moves Festival: A Movement will open with the illustrious Bebe Miller Company (BMC) making its Harlem Stage debut for two days of performances (Thu, May 8 & Fri, May 9) set to commemorate the cross-disciplinary company's 40 year journey in producing new works that delve into the human condition through the physical language of dance. BMC was formed in 1985 by visionary and acclaimed award-winning choreographer Bebe Miller who has since then created more than 50 dance works for the company. Named a Master of African American Choreography by the Kennedy Center in 2005, Miller is one of the most celebrated choreographers in contemporary dance. For its first Harlem Stage appearance, BMC will premiere a new ensemble work with Indifferent Forest (2025) centered around how learnings from the forest inspire new approaches to interdependence and dancing on shared ground. The shows will also include two powerful solos from Miller's canon of work, Rain (1989) and Rhythm Studies (1999) - both standing as an expression of her faith in the moving body as a record of thought, experience, and beauty. 

E-Moves will also feature a night of conversation and performance with When We Dance, The Son Also Rises: Black Men in Dance, An Evening of Conversation, Choreography, and Cocktails (Mon, June 2). Curated by Ronald K. Alexander (Faculty, Ailey School) and Calvin Royal III (Principal Dancer, American Ballet Theatre), the event will offer reflections by Black male artists in the field of dance as they look back at what has been, acknowledge the here and now, and envision what lies ahead. This conversation will serve as a moment to contemplate the complexity, intersectionality, and beauty of diversity of Black men in dance, while also recognizing shared values and commonalities. Participants include: Ronald K. Brown, Founder and Director of Evidence Dance Company; Robert Garland, Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem; Desmond Richardson, Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Complexions Contemporary Ballet; and Matthew Rushing, Interim Artistic Director of The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. The evening includes a special tribute to the late Joanne Robinson Hill, a former dancer, esteemed member of the arts education community, and advocate of the arts and a performance by Babatunji Johnson, a dance artist and choreographer from Alonzo King LINES Ballet. A wine reception will follow the discussion.

To close out the Festival, Harlem Stage will present the premiere of SOAK (Fri, June 13 & Sat, June 14), a place-specific piece created at Harlem Stage by interdisciplinary artists Eiko Otake and DonChristian Jones. Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Otake worked for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma and, since 2014, has been directing her own projects. In 2017, Otake began working with multimedia artist and director Jones whose work - greatly informed by his time spent painting murals on Rikers Island with incarcerated youth and teaching at Harvey Milk High School/Hetrick-Martin Institute - has exhibited and performed in spaces such as The Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA. The pair joined forces on Otake's ongoing piece - The Duet Project: Distance is Malleable, an evolving and open-ended series of experiments in collaboration. In SOAK, Otake and Jones explore the concept of water as a shared origin, and the body as rivers of memories. Drawing upon their singular and dynamic history of collaboration, they collide toward many tomorrows. 

"In an age defined by fragmentation and discord, dance endures as a profound language of unity. It speaks across boundaries, transcending the limits of words and ideologies, inviting us into a shared experience of being,” shared Dr. Indira Etwaroo, CEO & Artistic Director, Harlem Stage. “At the E-Moves Festival, we reclaim a deeper understanding of one another, finding harmony not in sameness, but in the beauty of our differences. In this moment of division, dance becomes a beacon—a testament to our collective resilience, and a call to move forward, together."