CITIZEN ARTS INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL to Launch Inaugural Season in NYC

The Citizen Arts International Festival announced today the lineup for its upcoming 2026 season, from September 7-27, 2026. The events will take place across New York City public spaces, and all events are free to attend.

Citizen Arts International transforms New York City's public spaces into vibrant stages for free international performance, participatory art, and cultural exchange. Bringing art into everyday life across the boroughs, the woman-led festival fosters joy, civic engagement, and social connection.

Responding to calls from civic leaders and urban policy advocates to expand equitable access to culture in public space, the festival centers a model of radical accessibility and global cultural exchange, bringing free, high-quality performing arts directly into neighborhood parks and community spaces.

In collaboration with community organizations citywide, the festival's inventive placemaking transforms ordinary spaces into sites of joy, spectacle, dialogue, and shared civic experience. Programming spans new circus, dance, music, theatre, and participatory performance that invite audiences to engage not just as spectators, but as participants in a shared cultural landscape.

Rooted in local partnerships, Citizen Arts International collaborates with organizations including The Ukrainian Museum, Culture Lab LIC, The Bushwick Starr, New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, MADE Bush Terminal, Bronx Children's Museum, Barnard Movement Lab, and more to connect performance with community conversation. Through hosted performances, workshops, and intergenerational learning opportunities, the festival creates intimate connections between audiences of all ages to engage with global artists and ideas in spaces that belong to them.

The festival is led by co-directors Meg Araneo, Natalie Rine, and Elena Siyanko. The multigenerational, women-led leadership champions collaboration, artistic vision, and public engagement as central to the citywide festival initiative. With decades of experience in nonprofit leadership, festival programming, international touring, and scholarly practice, they offer a civic-minded, community-focused, and globally informed approach to multidisciplinary performance in public spaces. For more information, please visit here.

SERVE AND PROTECT

DIRECT ACTION THEATRE
U.S. Premiere
September 9-10 | Community Workshops (Not Public Performances)
September 12 & 13 | Pop-Up Locations Coming Soon

A participatory public performance from Norway, Serve and Protect playfully reimagines the visual language of authority. Through dance, humor, and unexpected encounters, the work invites audiences to experience the dynamic between joy and political critique, transforming public space into a place where power, community, and care can be explored through shared participation.

The performance is preceded by a multi-day workshop with community members to create an environment of listening and exchange.

FROM SKY TO EARTH

James Brandon LEWIS +
ANTOINE LE MENESTREL
World Premiere
September 12 | Location TBA

From Sky to Earth is a world premiere that unites U.S. jazz saxophonist and 2026 Guggenheim Fellow James Brandon Lewis with French vertical dance pioneer Antoine Le Menestrel in a new interdisciplinary work commissioned by the Citizen Arts International Festival. Set against New York City's architecture, live music and vertical dance transform building facades into spaces of encounter, where improvisation, movement, and community reimagine the relationship between art and the urban landscape.

SUZIK

FORCE
NYC Premiere
September 12 | Culture Lab LIC
September 13 | The Bushwick Starr

SUZIK is a striking three-person Chinese pole performance that reimagines verticality as a space for cooperation rather than competition. Set against the gravity-defying line of the pole, the performers resist rigid hierarchies of a "vertical society" by supporting one another. SUZIK (meaning "verticality" in Korean) proposes a new understanding of balance, coexistence, and shared progress, where harmony is found not in dominance but in collective care.

Presented in partnership with The Bushwick Starr and Culture Lab LIC.

FLAMBOYANTS!

LA COMPAGNIE TILAWCIS
NYC Premiere
September 16 | Location TBA
September 17 | Location TBA

A documentary and musical theatre project, Flamboyants! weaves together New Orleans, Réunion, and Puerto Rican cultures. Enriched by Réunion-based musicians Frédéric Madia and Zélito Deliron, this collaboration between Florient Jousse and Mardi Gras Indian leader Big Chief Juan Pardo blends theatre, music, and performance to celebrate shared Creole histories and transoceanic connection.

Flamboyants! will be presented in two formats: a theatrical presentation and a concert performance in multiple locations.

RESERVOIR

MARÍA JOSÉ CONTRERAS LORENZINI
September 17-18 | Barnard Movement Lab

Reservoir is an immersive performance emerging from The Water Crisis of Santiago, an interdisciplinary research project on glacier retreat and water scarcity. Blending live performance with virtual and augmented reality, the work invites audiences to experience the invisible dynamics of the global water crisis, revealing how climate change reshapes the landscapes, ecosystems, and cities that depend on water.

Presented in partnership with the Barnard Movement Lab.

UKRAINIAN DREAMS

TAIS PODA + MASTERVOICES
U.S. Premiere
September 25-26 | Cooper Square

Building facades come alive with Ukrainian Dreams, a luminous outdoor projection installation transforming urban space into a canvas of color and memory. Drawing on the visionary folk art of Maria Prymachenko, the piece unfolds in radiant, shifting imagery- flowers, animals, and dreamlike forms that speak to resilience, imagination, and the enduring spirit of Ukrainian culture. The installation is accompanied by a vocal score of Ukrainian songs performed live by New York City's MasterVoices, weaving sound and image into a single immersive experience.

Presented in partnership with The Ukrainian Museum.

THE GARDEN

FLYING LEAP
September 27 | Bronx Children's Museum

The Garden is a radically inclusive, interactive performance that explores nature and the life cycle with very young children aged 0-5 and their families in a public green space. Through movement theater, poetic text in multiple languages, music, and interactive play, families engage all five senses. The Garden offers play and respite as collectively those gathered consider nature's cycle and their place within it.

Presented in partnership with the Bronx Children's Museum.

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