Photos: Inside the 2024 Fire Island Dance Festival

Captivating world premieres and celebrated works shined within the awe-inspiring beauty of the Great South Bay’s expanse of sea and sky at this year’s record-breaking edition of Fire Island Dance Festival. The longest-running charitable and cultural event in Fire Island Pines raised a record $767,712 for Dancers Responding to AIDS, a program of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. 

The festival, held July 19-21, 2024, helps ensure performing artists as well as those across the country living with HIV/AIDS and other debilitating illnesses have access to lifesaving medications, counseling, healthy meals and emergency assistance. The professional dance community has access to this vital safety net of essential services through Broadway Cares’ annual support of the Entertainment Community Fund (formerly The Actors Fund).

Tony Award winner Beth Leavel, most recently seen in Broadway’s Lempicka, hosted the festival’s three performances with effervescent charm and bawdy humor. Leavel expressed her reverence for dance through the lens of her zany misadventures in movement across her prolific career on Broadway.

This year’s captivating performances included seven world premieres by choreographers  Gilbert Bolden III, Billy Griffin, Keerati Jinakunwiphat, Pontus Lidberg, Chalvar Monteiro,  Ingrid Silva and Akira Uchida.

Check out out photos from inside the festival here!