Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival to Return for Winter Season

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) has announced the return of the Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival for its first winter season.  Part of the Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance, this iteration of the Festival highlights the works of New York City-based companies, featuring pieces by choreographers Hannah Garner, Omar Román de Jesús, Heidi Latsky, Shamel Pitts, Netta Yerushalmy, Caili Quan, and Rosie Herrera.

The Lincoln Center Presents 26/27 Season continues to shine a spolight on dance with pieces from Soles of Duende, Aszure Barton and Ambrose Akinmusire, and Michela Marino Lerman, as well as an evening in honor of Carmen de Lavallade, with additional activities designed to enhance and expand an audience's experience of dance at LCPA.

All events are Free or Choose-What-You-Pay, continuing the institution's bold commitment to arts accessibility for all—a trailblazing model that helps ensure Lincoln Center Presents season events can be experienced by everyone. Since 2022, LCPA's Free and Choose-What-You-Pay model has helped bring nearly 3 million people to the Lincoln Center campus through performances, educational events, festivals, and open-air experiences.

A new, biannual festival offered each summer and winter, the Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival establishes a consistent and ambitious home for contemporary dance at Lincoln Center, including commissions and new education initiatives. The festival launched in June 2026, featuring five international companies that presented cutting-edge works exploring different dance forms through themes of personal heritage and origin, identity, and transformation by choreographers from the United Kingdom, South Korea, Belgium, Spain, and France.

Beginning January 6, 2027 in Alice Tully Hall, the Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival  celebrates choreographers presenting boundary-pushing works, including a world premiere, two New York premieres, and two works commissioned by the Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance.

• Opening the festival, Netta Yerushalmy's MOVEMENT synthesizes over 100 citations from an expansive range of dances across genres and cultures.
• In the world premiere of Days of Awe, a Pasculano Collaborative commission, Heidi Latsky creates a powerful meditation on disruption, transformation, and resilience.
• Hannah Garner's 2nd Best Dance Company presents a reimagined Slumber, which walks the fuzzy line between dance and play, with commissioning support from the Pasculano Collaborative.
• Omar Román de Jesús and his company BOCA TUYA present the New York premiere of Sombreristas, which invites audiences to shed the skin of adult decorum.
• The New York premiere of Marks of RED by Shamel Pitts' TRIBE creates a world of magical realism exploring Black embodiment, featuring scenic design by Tony Award-winner Mimi Lien (Lincoln Center Artist-in-Residence 2022-2024).
• Juilliard Dance celebrates its 75th anniversary, honoring a legacy of artistic excellence while showcasing the next generation of dance artists. The evening will include first year students performing a new work by Juilliard Arnhold Creative Associate Caili Quan, and one by Guggenheim Choreographic Fellow Rosie Herrera performed by fourth year students.

The institution's expanded commitment to contemporary dance continues throughout the 26/27 Lincoln Center Presents Season with additional presentations made possible by the Pasculano Collaborative:

• Soles of Duende takes the stage during Lincoln Center's Open House programming, bringing together tap (Amanda Castro), flamenco (Arielle Rosales), and Kathak (Brinda Guha) in David Geffen Hall's Wu Tsai Theater, offering excerpts from Can We Dance Here?
• In Aszure Barton and Ambrose Akinmusire's A a | a B : B E N D, two visionaries come together to create an intimate yet wildly provocative world where music and dance coexist onstage.
• In the David Rubenstein Atrium, ALBA Musik: Contemporary Flamenco blends traditional Latin dance and music with contemporary instrumentation, vivacious poetry, and modern songwriting and Michela Marino Lerman offers Sole Blue, a captivating exploration of tap dance as a living extension of the blues featuring Love Movement.
• An evening dedicated to honoring the extraordinary life and enduring legacy of Carmen de Lavallade, featuring dancers from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Beyond the stage, contemporary dance comes to life through pre-show conversations, exhibitions, education programs for the next generation of dance artists, and original scholarship that advances the field.

• In January, contemporary dance scholar, writer, artist, and public programs collaborator Sarah Cecilia Bukowski will provide dramaturgical and research support for the Footnotes initiative, including participation in pre-show talks, creation of notes in the playbills, and the creation of an exhibition in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall designed to provide context for audiences about this history of contemporary dance at LCPA.
• A new program, NextGen Choreographers, will share work by four high school student dancers training to become choreographers as they explore dance as a medium for civic expression.

Established from the largest single programming gift in LCPA's history, the Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance is bringing the most dynamic and innovative contemporary dance from here in New York City and across the globe to join the cultural crossroads of Lincoln Center, honoring the distinguished legacy of dance on campus and investing in the next generation of dance artists.

Donald Borror began as Director of the Collaborative in December of last year and spearheads the biannual Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival alongside a variety of programmatic resources and collaborations to support dancers, choreographers, and companies in New York City and beyond.

“Lincoln Center is uniquely positioned to draw on the creative power of a campus where contemporary dance has been part of the story from the very beginning,” said Shanta Thake, Ehrenkranz Chief Artistic Officer of LCPA. “As we shine a focus this January on New York City-based dance companies, our artists are supported not just to present work, but to create, develop, and sustain creativity that meets the moment today and engages in cultural dialogues across artistic and civic spaces.”

“We are proud to build on the success of Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival's first summer season, presenting some of the most engaging and unique of New York City's choreographic voices to kick off 2027,” said Donald Borror, Director of the Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance. “Investing in the creative pipeline for artists is a priority for our work and we are so excited to share and support these powerhouse choreographers as a snapshot of New York City's incredible contemporary dance community.”