Acclaimed for its signature short-takes format, the DANCE NOW Festival presents a diverse range of works from some of today’s most innovative and dynamic dance makers. The 24thseason of this lively fall festival will feature 40 emerging and established choreographers, including DANCE NOW veterans and festival newcomers. Every show features Emcee TruDee (aka Deborah Lohse).

The annual DANCE NOW Festival serves as a vital testing ground for the development of full-evening works to be presented at Joe’s Pub as part of DANCE NOW’s Commissioned Artist Series. As part of this mission, the festival offers a unique challenge for artists: to create a clear and complete artistic statement in five minutes or less for the Pub’s tiny stage. The festival producers select ten artists whose work best meets the festival challenge to participate in an encore program. The overall challenge winner receives a development stipend, creative residencies at DANCE NOW Silo on Kirkland Farm in Bucks County, PA, and at Arts On Site in New York City, and a future commission to create a new work for Joe’s Pub. 

2019 DANCE NOW Festival Lineup and Schedule:

Wednesday, September 4
The Bang Group
Sarah Chien
Brendan Drake
Melanie Greene
LajaMartin
Loni Landon Dance Project
Tiffany Mills Company
Dmitri Peskov
Alice Sheppard
Amber Sloan 

Thursday, September 5
BAIRA
Adam Barruch
Isa&Eila
Sara Juli
LMnO3
Claire Porter / PORTABLES
Ruckus Dance
Yoshito Sakuraba / Abarukas
Gus Solomons jr
Maleek Washington 

Friday, September 6
Kimberly Bartosik / daela
binbinFactory / Satoshi Haga & Rie Fukuzawa
Blue Wyatt Project 
Doug Elkins
Mark Gindick
Orlando Hernández
TAKE Dance
Tiny Trip
Kate Weare Company
Nicole Wolcott 

Saturday, September 7
Tsiambwom M. Akuchu
HUMA
Cleo Mack
The People Movers x The RAD Lab
Joshua L. Peugh
Subject: Matter
Caleb Teicher & Company
Nicole Vaughan-Diaz
Megan Williams Dance Projects
Zvi Dance

The ENCORE! Program:

Tsiambwom M. Akuchu
Kɜmwetɜ (Revelations)
Choreographed and performed by Tsiambwom M. Akuchu

Adam Barruch
Carousel
Choreographed and performed by Adam Barruch
Music by Jacques Brel

Mark Gindick
SoLo
Choreographed by Mark Gindick in collaboration with David Neumann and Michael Bongar
Performed by Mark Gindick
Music by Frank Sinatra and Patrick Swayze

Orlando Hernández
Aguacero
Choreographed and performed by Orlando Hernández
Music by Totó la Momposina

Cleo Mack / Rock Dance Collective
Arrangement
Choreographed by Cleo Mack
Performed by Blair Ritchie, Kelli McGovern, Mandy Stallings
Music by Peggy Lee

Claire Porter / PORTABLES
Sentenced to Sentences (excerpt)
Choreographed and performed by Claire Porter
Text by Claire Porter
Music by Camile Saint-Saëns

Gus Solomons jr
DUET
Choreographed by Gus Solomons jr
Performed by Gus Solomons jr with Li’l Gus
Music by Ryuichi Sakamoto

Isaias Santamaria
The Untitled Love
Choreographed and performed by Isaias Santamaria in collaboration with Eila Vallis
Music by Bal – Sagoth and Jimmy Durante

Megan Williams Dance Projects
Sure, Am
Choreographed and performed by Megan Williams
Music by Helen Reddy

Nicole Vaughan-Diaz
a portrait of them
Choreographed by Nicole Vaughan-Diaz
Performed by Ryan Rouland-Smith and Nicole Vaughan-Diaz
Music by Sarah Davachi
Programs subject to change.

About DANCE NOW

DANCE NOW is produced by directors Robin Staff, Sydney Skybetter, and Tamara Greenfield.

For 24 years DANCE NOW has bent the rules to offer all-inclusive destination events that reveal the bustling energy and innovation of New York City dance makers. Created in 1995 as a program of the Downtown Arts Festival, DANCE NOW launched in 1996 as an independent festival. Without a performance venue, DANCE NOW learned to embrace limitation as a powerful source for creativity. Seeking creative ways to bring dance and community together, DANCE NOW developed partnerships to connect new audiences to innovative dance makers. Presenting dance in venues both traditional and not, DANCE NOW designed all-inclusive destination events for drained swimming pools, firehouses, galleries, and Joe’s Pub, where, in 2003 DANCE NOW introduced the Dance-mopolitan series. In 2005, DANCE NOW furthered its “less is more” mantra, creating a challenge initiative to encourage work marked by brevity, clarity, and effect. This inspired the commissioning of full-evening works specifically for the Pub, and the merging of all DANCE NOW programs to the Pub in 2011.

DANCE NOW’s programming at Joe’s Pub has defied the standard and encouraged artists to think outside the box and utilize the unique space, creating an inspiring new platform for dance. In the last decade, DANCE NOW has produced numerous critically acclaimed works at Joe’s Pub including Doug Elkins’ Fräulein Maria, David Parker’s ShowDown, Misters and Sisters, and Head Over Heels, Nicholas Leichter’s The Whiz and 20/20, Kyle Abraham’s Heartbreaks and Homies, Nicole Wolcott and Vanessa Walters’ Alley of the Dolls, Camille Brown’s One Second Past the Future, Monica Bill Barnes’s Snow Globes, Takehiro Ueyama’s Somewhere Familiar Melodies, Claire Porter’s Sent-ence, Mark Dendy’s NEWYORKnewyork@Astor Place, Ellis Wood’s The Juggler of Our Ladies, Larry Keigwin and Nicole Wolcott’s Places Please!, and, most recently, Megan Williams’s One Woman Show.

From a small festival series to four distinct programs, from NYC to Pennsylvania, DANCE NOW presents young innovators and emerging and maturing artists side by side, building relationships at varying stages of development and providing comprehensive assistance to advance creativity and new career paths. DANCE NOW Joe’s Pub challenges artists to investigate new directions. DANCE NOW Raw funnels new artists into its programs. DANCE NOW Silo and DANCE NOW SteelStacks provide paid teaching, residencies, and commissioning and performing opportunities through partnerships with DeSales University, Muhlenberg College, Lehigh Valley Charter School, and ArtsQuest at SteelStacks in Bethlehem, PA.

DANCE NOW is supported, in part, with funds from the Barbara Bell Cumming Foundation, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.