Nimbus Dance Reveals Spring Season SUM OF PARTS at Nimbus Arts Center in Jersey City

Nimbus Dance, a Jersey City-based contemporary company has revealed its Spring Season, Sum of Parts, May 15–16, 2026, with performances at the Nimbus Arts Center in Jersey City.

With more than 40 languages spoken in Jersey City and nearly half the population born outside the United States, questions of identity and belonging are central to daily life. For Nimbus Dance, these lived realities shape the foundation of this season's program, taking form in a world premiere by Princess Grace Award-winning choreographer Houston Thomas. Titled A Land, A Promise*, the work is set to choral music by Saunder Choi and performed live by the West Village Chorale. The work draws on two disparate yet connected literary sources: Emma Lazarus' 1883 sonnet The New Colossus, whose words at the base of the Statue of Liberty have long defined the nation's promise to immigrants; and short poems carved into the wooden walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station by detained Chinese immigrants in early parts of the 20th century. Built on a relentless pulse that fractures into moments of warmth and openness, the music holds urgency, contradiction and lament, while Thomas's choreography drives through that tension, creating a landscape where hope and exclusion exist side by side.

Pedro Ruiz's Heart & Flesh* offers a more intimate perspective with a duet set to music by Caroline Shaw and shaped by his fascination with birds and their migratory patterns, against his background experience as a Cuban immigrant. The choreography unfolds in close proximity, with two bodies moving in constant negotiation as the work traces the tension between belonging and displacement and what it means to call a place home. The West Village Chorale also performs live for this work.

Yoshito Sakuraba's Avenoir is driven by sweeping, physically expansive movement that builds a sense of time in motion. The title refers to the desire to see one's memories in advance, and the work moves between momentum and suspension, as layers of repetition give way to moments of stillness. Phrases recur and evolve, as if being revisited and re-understood, creating a landscape where past and present blur. Here, meaning only settles after the moment has already passed, mirroring the ways that identity and belonging take shape over time.

The program closes with Through the Golden Door, a large-scale dance-theater work developed collaboratively by six Nimbus dance artists, in collaboration with New York Times bestselling author Helene Stapinski, and directed by Nimbus Artistic Director Samuel Pott. Drawn from recorded conversations with longtime Jersey City residents—activists, artists, and community leaders—the piece uses oral history to capture a city balanced at a critical point of transition, reflecting on the present moment amid disruptive change, uncertainty and ambivalence about the future. The dancers embody these voices to build a living portrait that channels the stories of resilience, displacement, and belonging into a collective portrait.

"At Nimbus, we're always thinking about how dance can hold both personal and collective stories at once," notes Nimbus Founder and Artistic Director Samuel Pott. "This program reflects the world around us—how people move across borders, across time, and across identities—and how those experiences live in the body. This work is about recognizing ourselves and each other inside those stories."