La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club Reveals Lineup For 21st Annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival

La Mama Experimental Theatre Club has announced the lineup for the 21st annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival. La MaMa Moves! runs from April 9 through May 10, 2026. La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre and The Downstairs Theatre are located at 66 E. 4th Street, and The Club and Community Arts Space are at 74A E. 4th Street (between the Bowery and 2nd Avenue). Tickets are $30 (general), $25 (students/seniors), with a $50 Support the Artists ticket option. 

La MaMa Moves! 2026, the 21st season of La MaMa's annual dance festival, brings together dance artists at all stages of their careers to experiment, collaborate, and share new work. Curated by Nicky Paraiso, the festival will take place over five weeks in April and May of 2026 and will include twelve productions across La MaMa's four venues, and up to four in-person community workshops and public discussions. This year's festival line-up features dancemakers Donald Byrd, Beth Corning with guest puppeteer Tom Lee, Vangeline, Patricia Hoffbauer, Dancers Unlimited, Sun Kim Dance Theatre, Green Cow, Iver Findlay, BamBam Frost & Ori Flomin, Pioneers Go East Collective, and ms. z tye & Mina Nishimura in a shared evening curated by La MaMa Curatorial Residents Martita Abril & Blaze Ferrer.

Building on the festival's growing national impact, La MaMa Moves! will again offer hybrid programming that extends beyond New York City, including livestreams of several productions and open rehearsals or interactive discussions designed for online audiences, partners, and students across the U.S. These online/hybrid events are part of La MaMa's ongoing work with Bloomberg Philanthropies Digital Accelerator program. These types of programs are essential not only to La MaMa's mission and strategic plan, but to the sustainability of the dance community, because they empower and connect generations of dance artists.

In 2026, La MaMa Moves! continues its Curatorial Residency for the second year. Over six months, Curatorial Residents Martita Abril and Blaze Ferrer work with Nicky Paraiso as they plan and execute a shared program to be presented in the festival. Curatorial Residents have research time in the La MaMa Archive (which documents 60+ years of dance history), and attend productions across NYC with Paraiso. The residency aims to provide curatorial mentorship and professional development to young dance artists, empowering them to build sustainable careers while bringing new voices into La MaMa.

OCCURRENCE #14

Donald Byrd

Thursday, April 9 & Friday, April 10, 8pm; Saturday, April 11, 5pm; Sunday, April 12, 3pm
66 East 4th St. | The Downstairs

A glimpse into Spectrum Dance Theater Artistic Director Donald Byrd's experience and memories of 9/11, OCCURRENCE #14 combines old and new movement ideas, showcasing them together and offering new perspectives.

Center for Fiction: This Is Not May '68!

Patricia Hoffbauer

Thursday, April 16, Friday, April 17 & Saturday, April 18, 7pm; Sunday, April 19, 3:30pm
66 East 4th St. | Ellen Stewart Theatre

Directed and choreographed by Patricia Hoffbauer, this bold new work gathers eleven performers, ages 25–80, in a charged encounter between generations. Through a dynamic mix of text and movement, together they reimagine historical struggles for power, love, and knowledge. Here, the past activates us. The unfinished revolutions of 1968 cast a restless shadow, pressing urgently against our present time. As memory and bodies collide with lived experience, performers are propelled into unexpected situations and daring new possibilities.

STAND BY - an allegory

Corningworks / THE GLUE FACTORY PROJECTS

Thursday, April 16, 8pm & Friday, April 17, 8pm
66 East 4th St. | The Downstairs

A multi-disciplinary dancetheater production created in collaboration with choreographer Beth Corning and puppeteer Tom Lee. A whimsical glimpse at humans' inability to recognize our mortality — not so much about death or grief or even loss, as about the mysterious and magical continuity of life.

MAN WOMAN

Vangeline

Saturday, April 18, 8pm; Sunday, April 19, 2pm
66 East 4th St. | The Downstairs

MAN WOMAN is a choreographic work by Vangeline that revisits the iconic photographic series Man and Woman by Eikoh Hosoe — featuring Tatsumi Hijikata and Motofuji — through a contemporary feminist lens.

Hunter College

Intimate works by Hunter College faculty members Tiffany Merritt-Brown and Jade Charon Robertson explore the enduring POWER of Black femininity, kinship, spirituality, and ancestry.

Thursday, April 16 & Friday, April 17, 7pm; Saturday, April 18, 6pm; Sunday, April 19, 4pm
74A East 4th St. | The Club

Gold Pylon

Jade Charon Robertson

Gold Pylon by Jade Charon Robertson is an inquiry into the possibilities of a grandmother's prayer becoming an intercessory superpower and gateway to a higher self. Charon's ongoing multi-media research project series Gold was created to emPOWER Black and Brown people by connecting them to the element gold's spiritual, metaphysical, and ancestral powers through dance, film, sound, and writing. This latest event in the series is a live multimedia performance solo that journeys through the refining and purification process of gold, reaching for the gateway of the higher self.

Tender is the Night

Tiffany Merritt-Brown

Tender is the Night by Tiffany Merritt-Brown is an immersive dance work exploring Black femininity and the intimate kinship that shapes sisterhood, revealing how strength, vulnerability, and compassion emerge through collective care.

ms. z tye & Mina Nishimura (shared evenings)

La MaMa Curatorial Residents: Martita Abril & Blaze Ferrer

Thursday, April 16, 8pm; Friday, April 17, 8pm; Saturday, April 18, 7:30pm; Sunday, April 19, 5pm
CAS (Community Arts Space)

CONFESSIONS OF PEACHES, THE VIXEN

ms. z tye

CONFESSIONS OF PEACHES, THE VIXEN is a cipher of pro hoe chronicles collaged into performance, with ms. z tye recalling the repentant memory of Y2K.

a hole new world.

Mina Nishimura

In a hole new world., dispersed holes and absences beyond the self are threaded into a dissonant tunnel tracing the resonance of a hollow center.

Alien of Extraordinary

Sun Kim Dance Theatre

Thursday, April 23, 7pm & Friday, April 24, 7pm
66 East 4th St. | Ellen Stewart Theatre

Alien of Extraordinary is an immersive dance-theatre work by Sun Kim, transforming her immigration journey in the U.S. into a powerful call for empathy and shared belonging.

Edible Tales: Ho'oulu

Dancers Unlimited

Saturday, April 25, 7pm & Sunday, April 26, 2pm
66 East 4th St. | Ellen Stewart Theatre

Edible Tales by Dancers Unlimited explores cultural heritage, social justice, and environmental sustainability through a bi-coastal food lens from Hawai'i and NYC.

SURFACE

Green Cow

Friday, April 24, 7pm; Saturday, April 25, 6pm; Sunday, April 26, 3pm
74A East 4th St. | The Club

The American premiere by Green Cow — a contemporary, Korean, circus-based experimental arts collective. Green Cow's work allows audiences to experience the climate crisis intuitively, within the triangular framework of "climate-life-body."

Iteration IV (For Allen)

Findlay//Sandsmark

Thursday, April 30, 7:30pm & Friday, May 1, 7:30pm
74A East 4th St. | The Club

Iteration IV (For Allen), from Findlay//Sandsmark, is a continuation and derivative of their recent series of iterative projects, parsing and re-imagining elements to find new connection points and resonating waves.

BamBam Frost & Ori Flomin (shared evenings)

Saturday, May 2, 8pm & Sunday, May 3, 3pm
74A East 4th St. | The Club

YES

BamBam Frost

Through constant transformation, pleasure, and play, YES by BamBam Frost moves through traces of pop culture, trying to navigate what is, what was, and what potentially could be. YES premiered in Stockholm in 2020 and has since played at venues in Marseille, Oslo, Copenhagen, Stavanger, Helsinki, and Brussels. BamBam is now creating a version specifically for La MaMa Moves 2026.

Settle In

Ori Flomin, Jody Oberfelder, Carolyn Hall, Sabrina DeVelis

Settle In is a personal reflection on ways to ground ourselves in times of change and uncertainty through layered physical dialogues between bodies, generations, movement, and live music. Featuring four intergenerational performers and original music composed and performed by Mal Stein.

CROSSROADS

Pioneers Go East Collective

Thursday, May 7, 7:30pm; Friday, May 8, 7:30pm; Saturday, May 9, 5pm; Sunday, May 10, 3pm
74A East 4th St. | The Club