City Center Unveils Dance Lineup for 2025 - 2026 Season

NEW YORK CITY CENTER will present the largest number of dance engagements in the institution’s recent history as part of the 2025 – 2026 Season. Musical theater programming for City Center’s 2025 – 2026 Season, including the Annual Gala Presentation and 2026 Encores! series, will be announced at a later date.

Fall for Dance Festival

New York City Center’s 2025 – 2026 Season opens with the 22nd Fall for Dance Festival from September 16 through 27. This annual showcase is an essential part of New York’s fall dance season and features an international array of dance artists and companies in five unique programs. In keeping with City Center’s mission of accessibility, all tickets for Fall for Dance are $20 (plus fees). Featuring the most international lineup since the pandemic, highlights include Argentina’s Social Tango Project, the Festival debut of Germany’s The Stuttgart Ballet, returning Festival favorite Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, San Francisco Ballet, and Paris Opera Ballet Étoiles Hannah O’Neill and Hugo Marchand in a restaging of Jerome Robbins’s Afternoon of Faun. Commissions for the 22nd Festival include kNoname Artist | Roderick George and a new staging of Dog Rising by multidisciplinary Canadian artist Clara Furey (Bent Hollow). Tickets for Fall for Dance go on sale Sunday, August 24 at 11 am. Complete programming for Fall for Dance will be announced at a later date.

Paris Opera Ballet

One of the most prestigious dance companies in the world, Paris Opera Ballet makes a triumphant return to New York from October 9 through 12—their first major engagement since 2012—with the New York premiere of Red Carpet by celebrated choreographer Hofesh Shechter. Praised for his intense, visceral, and electrifying movement, Shechter began working with Paris Opera Ballet in 2018, with previous pieces including The Art of Not Looking Back (2018), Uprising (2022), and In your Rooms (2022). His first piece created for the company will have its world premiere at the Palais Garnier on June 10, 2025, as part of the 150th Anniversary of the historic theater. As with his other works, Shechter will collaborate on the creation of the music and set designs, in addition to his choreography. The piece will also feature costumes created in partnership with Chanel.

Turn It Out with Tiler Peck & Friends

From October 16 through 19, New York City Ballet star Tiler Peck returns to City Center for an encore presentation of the program she curated for the inaugural Artists at the Center. Receiving critical acclaim in New York and at London’s Sadler’s Wells as the touring production Turn It Out with Tiler Peck & Friends, the show features Peck alongside a collection of fellow stars: India Bradley, Chun Wai Chan, Michelle Dorrance, Jovani Furlan, Christopher Grant, Lex Ishimoto, Brooklyn Mack, Aaron Marcellus, Roman Mejia, Jillian Meyers, Mira Nadon, Quinn Starner, Byron Tittle, and Penelope Wendtlandt. The program opens with William Forsythe’s The Barre Project, Blake Works II, a work he created specifically for Peck with music by James Blake. Tiler Peck’s Thousandth Orange, set to live music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw follows and Alonzo King’s electric pas de deux Swift Arrow with music by Jason Moran. The program closes with the City Center commission Time Spell, a collaboration between Peck, tap dance icon Michelle Dorrance and Emmy-nominated Jillian Meyers.

Dutch National Ballet

Returning to New York for their first major engagement since 1982, the world-renowned Dutch National Ballet presents two programs of breathtaking artistry from November 20 through 22—both featuring celebrated former Bolshoi star Olga Smirnova. Program 1 opens with The Chairman Dances, company Director Ted Brandsen’s graceful setting of the John Adams score. Next is Wubkje Kuindersma’s Two and Only, a tender and powerful male duet featuring the songs of Michael Benjamin, and Jerome Robbins’s exquisite Chopin duet Other Dances. A new work, premiering as part of the Holland Festival in June 2025, by recently announced Associate Artist Alexei Ratmansky follows. And the program closes with Dutch master Hans van Manen’s Frank Bridge Variations, an exercise in contrasts: sharp and flowing, precise and free, angry and melancholy.

Program 2 opens and closes with works by Van Manen—Adagio Hammerklavier, a classic of twentieth-century dance, and 5 Tangos, a hybrid of ballet and tango set to the music of Argentine composer-bandoneon master Astor Piazzolla. Between is a duet by Olivier Award-winning South African choreographer Mthuthuzeli November entitled Thando, and European master Jiří Kylián’s Wings of Wax, inspired by the Greek myth of Icarus.

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

New York City Center’s Principal Dance Company and a beloved cultural ambassador, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater began performing at City Center in 1971. The company returns December 3, 2025 through January 4, 2026 for a five-week engagement that has become a joyous holiday tradition. The milestone season raises the curtain on Ailey’s next era under the leadership of new Artistic Director Alicia Graf Mack, guided as ever by Alvin Ailey’s pioneering legacy. Audiences will be treated to classic works from the Ailey repertory that have inspired and uplifted fans for decades, including the touchstone of inspiration, Revelations, the ultimate anthem to resilience and joy. The Company will continue to break ground with new works by contemporary choreographers that promise to propel dance in exhilarating new directions, pushing the bounds of what the human body can do and what the human spirit can achieve.

Lyon Opera Ballet

Recently at City Center as part of the celebratory 80th Season (2023 – 2024), Lyon Opera Ballet returns February 19 through 21 with a double bill of works from either side of the century. For the 1999 work BIPED, Merce Cunningham used cutting-edge computer programs to both generate movement and phrases and capture his dancers in motion. And for his 2023 work Mycelium (receiving its US premiere) Christos Papadopoulos was inspired by the interconnectivity of natural organisms, driven by the pulsating rhythm of Coti K’s electronic music. This exhilarating program is presented by Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels.

25th Flamenco Festival

The Flamenco Festival annually draws one of the most diverse audiences to City Center. The 2026 engagement (Feb 26 – Mar 8) will celebrate the 25th Flamenco Festival with a two-week lineup of flamenco legends and rising stars direct from Spain. Olivier Award winner Sara Baras (last seen in the 2023 Festival) and her company Ballet Flamenco Sara Baras bring Vuela (Fly), a choreographic journey in four acts that pays tribute to the great flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucía, and the Spain National Dance Award-winning duo Estévez / Paños explore the evolution of flamenco in La Confluencia. Additional programming will be announced at a later date.

Martha Graham Dance Company

Martha Graham Dance Company’s centennial celebration arrives at City Center from April 9 through 12 for five unmissable performances. Three of Graham’s greatest masterworks, Night Journey, Chronicle, and Appalachian Spring, each with iconic stage designs by sculptor Isamu Noguchi, will anchor programs that include celebrated recent new works by Jamar Roberts and Baye & Asa. An extraordinary, yet-to-be-announced centennial creation will round out the programs, and the classic Graham scores will once again be brought to life by the Mannes Orchestra.

Dance Theatre of Harlem

For more than 56 years, Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) has electrified the ballet world with visionary artistry and unmatched energy. This season at New York City Center (April 16–19), the company brings back its legendary Firebird—a beloved signature work that reimagines the classic Russian folk tale of love triumphing over evil in a lush Caribbean setting. Originally created in 1982, this vibrant production—choreographed by John Taras with spectacular sets and costumes by Geoffrey Holder—dazzled audiences around the globe. As The New York Times declared, it “does one thing other versions do not – send its audience into a whooping spell of delirium.” The program also includes new and recent works by DTH Artistic Director Robert Garland, whose distinctive blend of postmodern and neoclassical styles infuses ballet with urgency, elegance, and soul. DTH’s annual New York season showcases the breathtaking range of its dancers and the company’s enduring, trailblazing spirit. 

Ballet Hispánico

From April 23 through 26, Ballet Hispánico presents MUJERES: Women in Motion—the company’s second program dedicated entirely to female choreographers. This evening deepens Ballet Hispánico’s commitment to illuminating Latine culture—where madres, tías, abuelas, and hermanas have long been at the heart of its stories. Long defined by the male gaze, the dance world often casts women as ethereal, silent figures. In Women in Motion, women are the visionaries, the architects—using movement to declare, “This is what dance means to me.” The program features two World Premieres: a vibrant, rhythm-rich work by Brazil’s Cassi Abranches, resident choreographer of Grupo Corpo, and a searing reimagining of Antigone by Cuba’s Marianela Boán, known for her genre-defying Contaminated Dance. A third work from Ballet Hispánico’s celebrated repertory, created by a leading female voice, completes this powerful program. Also featured this season: the En Familia/Family Matinee, a joyful introduction to the company’s repertory, hosted by Artistic Director & CEO Eduardo Vilaro, with interactive moments for audiences of all ages—and all tickets $25.

Hugo Marchand | Artists at the Center