Learning Through Seeing

Here Lies Love is a groundbreaking musical about former Filipina First Lady Imelda Marcos’s rise to power and subsequent fall at the hands of the Philippine People Power Revolution. From the brilliant minds of David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, Here Lies Love has been called “an ecstatic and dynamic party” by Time Out New York.

To learn more about Here Lies Love, click here

From the author of Downstairs and Bernhardt/Hamlet, Pulitzer Prize finalist Theresa Rebeck is back with Dig, a new play about courage, redemption, and photosynthesis.

In a dying plant shop in a dying neighborhood, Roger receives a visitor from the past: Megan, the neighborhood screw-up, just out of rehab. He wants nothing to do with this disaster. Rebeck’s signature wit, intelligence, and depth brings us a riveting play that asks – can a soul beyond saving be saved?

To learn more about Dig, click here

NY-based choreographer Tatiana Desardouin and Passion Fruit Dance Company bring bold street and club dance styles to the stage. The performance features moving testimony from four women with different backgrounds and a range of life stories, revealing both their pain and paths to joy. While the piece explores difficult social issues faced by women, it conveys a broad message of hope, celebration and an invitation to unfold and release mental blocks.

To learn more about Trapped, click here

Alex Kim and Kenny Park Yi are two queer, Korean-American comedians who perform and produce shows all around New York City. Now they’re bringing their iconic Boba Gays, an all-queer and all-Asian comedy/variety show, to the Lincoln Center stage. Don’t miss these two up-and-coming comedians in their biggest show yet! Best known for programming at their beloved home venue of Caveat NYC, the duo brings the laughs, boba, music, drag, and above all, queer Asian excellence to Lincoln Center. The pair will be joined by featured performer and Lincoln Center darling, the superstar Jasmine Rice LaBeija, as well as a host of super special guests.

To learn more about 보바 Gays Take Lincoln Center, click here

Immerse yourself into the world of The Creeps where five dark, creepy, and shockingly funny characters confront the shadowy depths of the human psyche, delving into macabre themes of fear, desire, and the unknown.

“Without a doubt, ‘The Creeps’ lives up to its name. Written and performed by Catherine Waller, the show tells the story of a bizarre group of malformed misfits living and surviving in a derelict building lorded over by a mysterious, oppressive doctor. With the audience encouraged to participate, Ms. Waller’s freak show is a strange and ghoulish journey into the surreal and the absurd.” – All About Solo

The Creeps have crawled to the surface once again playing Off-Broadway at Playhouse 46 after award-winning runs at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Hollywood Fringe Festival, and United Solo Festival.

To learn more about The Creeps, click here

In a military tent on the shore of a country that is winding down a multi-year war, a Mother processes returning soldiers for the homeland and a Son returns from combat. Over the course of one night, they must navigate a state-mediated language, communicating to each other what they’ve witnessed through the years as the war has raged on and a dictator has come to power. 9 Kinds of Silence considers sound and silence as means of control, subjugation, and protest.

Join us in Majumdar’s dramatic experiment that invites you to focus on what is heard, thought and felt in silence, the last refuge of authentic humanity.

To learn more about 9 Kinds of Silence, click here

Known as one of New York’s most popular live entertainment experiences, Amateur Night at the Apollo attracts performers and audiences from around the world in a classic talent competition that has launched the careers of countless legendary artists, from Ella Fitzgerald to Lauryn Hill, H.E.R, D’Angelo, Jazmine Sullivan, and Machine Gun Kelly.

After nearly two years of being dark, the classic competition returns to shed light on the careers of a whole new roster of stars.  Be a part of the notoriously “tough” audience in an interactive evening unlike any other, and lend your voice to decide who will “be good or be gone” to win the triumphant grand prize of up to $20,000. The family friendly show, great for all ages, also includes the Child Stars of Tomorrow who also compete for a chance to win $5,000.

To learn more about Amature Night, click here

Each week, our hand-picked ensembles converge on the Magnet stage for a full night of high-powered long form. Each group brings its unique style to some of the greatest improv forms, from Harolds to monoscenes and everything in between. Check it out every Wednesday night and see what your faves are up to!

To learn more about Megawatt, click here

Zoetrope tells the story of an underdog military postal officer with a dream. Until he dies. Then it tells the story of his ex-wife, her sister, his lover, their son, the playwright René Marqués, and El Grito de Lares­––Puerto Rico’s one full day of independence. Live-feed video and dance carry the play from Lares, Puerto Rico to Harlem, New York and back as it flips between Spanish and English with supertitles in both languages throughout.

To learn more about Zoetrope, click here

Three genre-defying artists join forces to tell the story of love and self-discovery in Heart of Brick, a theatrical dance and music production that captures the multi-generational spirit of the Black queer community. Experimental R&B musician serpentwithfeet embarks on his first theatrical stage work alongside multimedia artist Wu Tsang, whose art intertwines film, aesthetic performance, and political activism. Completing the team is choreographer Raja Feather Kelly, an artist whose surrealist aesthetics explore the intersections of popular culture and human desire. With a cast of seven dancers and live performance by serpentwithfeet, Heart of Brick follows the love that blossoms between two men in a Black gay nightclub. Beguilingly gentle and sincere, the work features music from serpentwithfeet’s newest album, weaving together music and dance into a theatrical experience.

To learn more about Heart of Brick, click here

REFUGE – a place or a feeling of safety, comfort, community, and regrowth.

Join us for a celebration of faith and spiritual traditions expressed through the power of music. Featuring soaring Gospel anthems, lively Kelzmer melodies, percussive Youruban religious music and hypnotic Gnawa rhythms, this evening gathers internationally acclaimed artists from across the spectrum of faiths for an uplifting tribute to art and song as a source of refuge, hope, and optimism.

To learn more about Devotion: Faith as Refuge, click here

Maya, a young Salvadoran-American woman, navigates trauma and family mythology through magic and folklore as she comes of age in Phoenix, Arizona. Her story explores mother-daughter relationships, mixed race identity, being the child of an immigrant, growing up without a father, and using fantasy as a coping mechanism, while featuring movement and dance. Owls, jaguars, and cacti also make dream-like and delightful appearances.

To learn more about Mi Abuela, Queen of Nightmares, click here

A solo exploration of the experience of displacement, A disguised welcome… draws inspiration from Kenyan-born, France-based choreographer Wanjiru Kamuyu‘s experiences in Africa, North America, and Europe, offering a bitingly satirical look at the notions of center and periphery.

To learn more about A disguised welcome, click here

This dazzling world premiere welcomes you into Jaja’s bustling hair braiding shop in Harlem where every day, a lively and eclectic group of West African immigrant hair braiders are creating masterpieces on the heads of neighborhood women. During one sweltering summer day, love will blossom, dreams will flourish and secrets will be revealed. The uncertainty of their circumstances simmers below the surface of their lives and when it boils over, it forces this tight-knit community to confront what it means to be an outsider on the edge of the place they call home. This extraordinary new play is by the award winning Ghanaian-American playwright Jocelyn Bioh (School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play) and will be directed by Obie winner Whitney White (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord).

To learn more about Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, click here

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement’s #Never21 hashtag, French-Malian choreographer and dancer Smaïl Kanouté’s deeply resonant piece—making its U.S. premiere—pays tribute to young people of color who have lost their lives to gun violence all over the world before reaching the age of 21. The performance, separated into three segments, focuses on the senseless deaths of young Black youth in New York, Johannesburg, and Rio de Janeiro.

Excerpts of powerful testimonies from victims’ family members are transcribed on the dancers’ bodies, combining dance and visual art. The dancers’ intense movement draws on contemporary and intuitive dance, krump, popping, and baile funk in recounting the stories of many broken lives.

To learn more about Never Twenty One, click here

Guns. Guns. Anti. Pro. Life. Death. Chaos. Control. In 2018 the public debate in America is between moving on with the future or maintaining the past. Debra, a single-mother overcome with grief, is bound by time as her son’s death hangs in the balance. What happens as the public attempts to repurpose her son’s life, but privately she isn’t ready to let go?

To learn more about Coping Mechanism, click here

American composer Jake Heggie’s masterpiece, the most widely performed new opera of the last 20 years, has its highly anticipated Met premiere, in a haunting new production by Ivo van Hove. Based on Sister Helen Prejean’s memoir about her fight for the soul of a condemned murderer, Dead Man Walking matches the high drama of its subject with Heggie’s beautiful and poignant music and a brilliant libretto by Terrence McNally. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium for this landmark premiere, with mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato starring as Sister Helen. The outstanding cast also features bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as the death-row inmate Joseph De Rocher, soprano Latonia Moore as Sister Rose, and legendary mezzo-soprano Susan Graham—who sang Helen Prejean in the opera’s 2000 premiere—as De Rocher’s mother

To learn more about Dead Man Walking, click here

Curriculum II applies the ideas of Cameroonian historian and political theorist Achille Mbembe, Nigerian-born writer and scholar Louis Chude-Sokei, and Jamaican writer and cultural theorist
Sylvia Wynter. Curriculum II explores the historical and persistent connection between race and technology and the pursuit of what is human.

In The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics, Louis Chude-Sokei quoted Sylvia Wynter: “The other must be understood as not just that which is oppressed or marginalized or rendered inhuman, subhuman, or animal; it also must be understood ‘as that which is to come.’” A poetic quilt of text, narration as philosophical lecture, live singing, and soundscore. Jones’s title is an ironic reference to Achille Mbembe’s 2018 interview by the Norwegian journalist Torbjorn Tumyr Nilsen, in which he said “For me, this is a matter of common sense. I am in favor of expanding the archive, reading the different archives of the world critically, each with and against the others. There can’t be any other meaning to a planetary curriculum.” This fertile notion inspired Bill T. Jones to undertake a series of works entitled Curriculum, juxtaposing formal exploration with a range of today’s urgent topics as expansive as Jones’s artistry. The series attempts to embrace formal directness and clarity while allowing it to be intruded upon by word fragments, imagery, and the stuff of Mbembe’s “planetary curriculum.”

To learn more about Curriculum II, click here

In 2004, former City Center President & CEO Arlene Shuler launched a festival that would bring the best in dance to a broader New York audience for the price of a movie ticket. This beloved fall tradition has welcomed over 378,000 fans and is now a fixture on the New York dance scene.

Celebrate 20 years of Fall for Dance with five genre- and continent-spanning programs, as well as pre-show dance lessons and an Opening Night Party.

This year’s highlights include an interdisciplinary collaboration between star ballerina Sara Mearns, choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith, and bass-baritone Davóne Tines co-presented with Vail Dance Festival; two World Premiere City Center Commissions—from tap icon Michelle Dorrance with celebrated street dance artist Ephrat Asherie, and Adesola Osakalumi with the visionary team behind Jam On The Groove; the return of beloved Brazilian troupe Grupo Corpo; and the all-star Paris Opera Ballet duo of Hugo Marchand and Germain Louvet.

To learn more about Fall for Dance, click here

Swiss artist Simon Senn uses theater to investigate today’s most exciting and controversial technological development: artificial intelligence (AI). Making its NY premiere, the production features Senn, Tammara Leites, and dSimon—an AI entity—and relates the intriguing story of dSimon’s creation. When Leites trains an AI to become a writer, she integrates it with Senn’s personality, personal data, and messaging. Events take an unsettling turn as dSimon begins to behave strangely, leaving Senn and Leites with a now autonomous, disturbing, and yet familiar monster.

To learn more about dSimon, click here

It’s 1937 in New York City’s Garment District, and shipping clerk Harry Bogen (Tony-winner Santino Fontana) would love to sell you a bill of goods. In this dark musical comedy, Bronx-born Harry must choose between the comfort of community and his own ambitious dreams. He’ll have to do whatever it takes to get ahead, and even more to stay there. Better watch your back – sewing needles can be sharp. Last seen on Broadway in 1962, I Can Get It For You Wholesale showcases memorable Harold Rome tunes, including the iconic “Miss Marmelstein,” and a book based on his own novel by Jerome Weidman. CSC’s production features a reimagined book by his son, John Weidman (Assassins), helmed by director Trip Cullman (Choir Boy)

To learn more about I Can Get It For You Wholesale, click here

Qui Nguyen, the wildly inventive playwright (and screenwriter for Marvel and Disney) known for his use of pop culture, pop music and puppetry, reunites with his frequent director, May Adrales, for this funny, sexy and brash new play. A young Vietnamese family attempts to put down roots in Arkansas, a place as different from home as it gets. A mom and dad balance big hopes and low-wage jobs, as old flings threaten to pull them apart. It all makes for a bumpy road to the American dream. From the world of Nguyen’s Vietgone, with its comic book and action movie influences, comes a play that melds a deeply personal story with the playwright’s trademark, killer humor. The New York Times hails the writer’s work as “culturally savvy comedy,” and this production shows you why.

To learn more about Poor Yella Rednecks, click here

With top-speed language, irreverent humor and dynamic physicality, Helen. is a story you know told in a way that you don’t. A wild adventure of paths crossing—of mothers and myths and memories and monsters—Caitlin George’s new play takes you on a journey whose experience is greater than the sum of its parts. Helen. invites you to leap into the unknown, and revel in the unexpected.

To learn more about Helen, click here

David Adjmi’s Stereophonic zooms in on a music studio in the mid-1970s, where an up-and-coming rock band recording a new album finds itself suddenly on the cusp of superstardom. Will the ensuing pressures spark their breakup — or their breakthrough? Featuring original music by Arcade Fire’s Will Butler, this intimate, electric play mines the agony and the ecstasy of creation.

To learn more about Stereophonic click here

NYTW Usual Suspect & Former 2050 Artistic Fellow Hansol Jung‘s Merry Me is an intoxicating queer cocktail of restoration comedy and the Greeks, served with a heavy garnish of ridiculous. NYTW Usual Suspect & Tony Award nominee Leigh Silverman directs.

On an island not far away from the vulnerable coasts of the enemy state, a mysterious blackout has left the Navy restless and itching for action. Lieutenant Shane Horne has occupied her time satisfying the libidinous needs of all the women on the base—including the jealous general’s wife. But her own merries will not… come. Meanwhile a famed Angel re-descends to amend her previous prophecy, sending the Navy’s psychiatrist on an epic quest to save humanity. Will the general discover the affair? Will the earth be saved? Will they ever be merry enough?

To learn more about Merry Me, click here

Near the end of the 19th century, a group of South African singers embarked on a tour of the UK and the US under the stage name “The African (Native) Choir,” hoping to raise funds to build a school in the city of Kimberley. Though the tour was profitable (and even included an audience with Queen Victoria), proof of the Choir’s performances was thought forever lost—until glass plates of the singers emerged in 2014, 125 years later.

The internationally acclaimed South African dancer and choreographer Gregory Maqoma revisits this forgotten moment in history to cathartic and uplifting effect in his BAM debut. Combining dance, song, and storytelling, the piece vividly reimagines the tour using a chorus of 16 singers and a quartet of musicians, all led by Maqoma himself. As the choir confronts racism at every turn, Maqoma and co-creator Thuthuka Sibisi use prejudice as a creative engine for a theatrical experience that pulses with hard truths and infinite creativity.

To learn more about Broken Chord, click here

Room with a View (2020), a large-scale, multidisciplinary performance featuring 20 dancers, shares a name with Rone’s fifth studio album, and was created during a ten-day carte blanche residency at Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet.

A rave takes place in an otherworldly set that evokes both a rock quarry and white box space. Industrial machinery cuts and polishes the rock, while Rone uses electronic machinery to sculpt sweeping, emotional soundscapes for a group of partygoers. In this liminal space, sounds, bodies, and images are open to interpretation, inscribable with a variety of meanings that reflect the ever-shifting nature of human existence.

While sculptors traditionally work with marble to, in the words of Michelangelo, “free the human form inside the block,” the performers dance to escape from the rigidity of the stone. With movement drawn from both raves and protests, the dancers explore humanity’s role in an impending disaster. Their chaotic, revelatory dancing underscores the persistence of beauty in even the most catastrophic of times.

To learn more about Room With A View, click here

Founded in 1975, the Tokyo-based company Sankai Juku offers contemporary Butoh creations characterized by their elegance, refinement, and emotional depth. The troupe returns to The Joyce with KŌSA, a compilation of reimagined excerpts from Sankai Juku’s vast repertoire. “By using no decor, only pure dance and the philosophical perception of images, I tried to bring everyone into my universe with as much curiosity as that which inhabited us at the first creation,” says choreographer and Sankai Juku founder Ushio Amagatsu. A sublime visual spectacle, KŌSA is a thought-provoking homage to the rich legacy of Japanese dance theater.

To learn more about Sankai Juku, click here

Choreographer Rachid Ouramdane comes to BAM for the first time with Corps extrêmes, his new gravity-defying piece of aerial dance. Athlete-performers traverse the stage together and alone, sometimes in ethereal white light, and sometimes while footage of death-defying outdoor activities is projected over them. As a study of the precipices of our world—both literal and figurative—this sweeping, meditative work invites us to find calmness in the space between earth and sky. It’s a piece of staggering scale and vision, a work of interior physicality seeking escape, miraculous for its ability to bring about a jolt of adrenaline and follow it up with an ebb of still quietude.

To learn more about Corps extrêmes, click here

Daphne has left the city to live with her girlfriend Winona in the woods, and things in the house are beginning to sour. As the days slip through her fingers and a series of unsettling incidents make her question the boundaries of her reality, a strange transformation takes hold of Daphne’s body. DAPHNE is a surreal and moving new work about the stories we tell ourselves, and the moments we’re forced to choose between difficult truths and comfortable illusions.

To learn more about Daphne, click here

Trajal Harrell has gained global recognition as a choreographer whose artistry is equally at home on an opera house stage or a ballroom floor. From New York’s avant-garde scene to his current home of Switzerland, Harrell has skillfully deconstructed the distinct dance styles of voguing, butoh, modern, and postmodern dance, injecting them with his remarkable blend of humor and poignancy. Harrell’s latest dance piece is at once a continuation and reimagining of his practice, set to jazz pianist Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert. Making his BAM debut, Harrell performs alongside six members of his recently assembled Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble, using his signature form of the catwalk. The precise movements and deep feeling of this international cast find fragility and tenderness in Jarrett’s canonical piece and the compositions of another musical genius: Joni Mitchell. Harrell, a powerhouse performer, begins the evening by dancing solo to signature songs by the iconic Canadian singer-songwriter. Mitchell’s music sets the stage for a transcendent, heart-stirring work.

To learn more about The Köln Concert, click here

Meet Usher: a Black, queer writer writing a musical about a Black, queer writer writing a musical about a Black, queer writer…

Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, blisteringly funny masterwork exposes the heart and soul of a young artist grappling with desires, identity, and instincts he both loves and loathes. Hell-bent on breaking free of his own self-perception, Usher wrestles with the thoughts in his head, brought to life onstage by a hilarious, straight-shooting ensemble. Bold and heartfelt in its truth-telling, A Strange Loop is the big, Black, and queer-ass Great American Musical for all!

To learn more about A Strange Loop, click here

Amal finds that she isn’t the only little girl lost in the big city. With her new friend she walks through the streets of the East Village looking for shelter.  On their journey they will try to answer the biggest of all questions: how to make the world a better place?

A processional installation created with La Mama and NYU (New York University).

To learn more about Little Amal Walks, click here

August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork THE PIANO LESSON returns to Broadway in the event of the season, starring Academy Award® winner Samuel L. Jackson, Screen Actors Guild Award® nominee John David Washington, and Tony® and Emmy® nominee Danielle Brooks, directed by Tony nominee LaTanya Richardson Jackson.

A battle is brewing in the Charles household. At the center lies the family’s prized heirloom piano. On one side, a brother plans to build the family fortune by selling it. On the other, a sister will go to any length to keep it and preserve the family history. Only their uncle stands in between. But even he can’t hold back the ghosts of the past.

THE PIANO LESSON is the play for now. It reaches into the souls of the present, revealing startling truths about how we perceive our past—and who gets to define our legacy.

To learn more about The Piano Lesson, click here

Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize, Martyna Majok‘s powerhouse play receives its Broadway premiere after a celebrated run at MTC’s Stage I. Hailed by The New York Times as “gripping, immensely haunting and exquisitely attuned,” this insightful, intriguing work is about the forces that bring people together, the complexity of caring and being cared for, and the ways we all need each other in this world. Kara Young and David Zayas join acclaimed original stars Gregg Mozgala and Katy Sullivan in this production, again directed by Obie Award winner Jo Bonney.

Masks are required for all guests while visiting the theatre. Proof of vaccination will not be required.

To learn more about Cost of Living, click here

No book has captivated and moved millions of readers during the past few years like A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara.

In this epic, worldwide bestselling novel, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Award in 2015, the complex relationships between four ambitious friends—a lawyer, an actor, an architect, and an artist—unfold over more than three decades. Adapted for the stage by celebrated director Ivo van Hove, this harrowing story follows them from college into the pressures of middle age in New York City. Jude, the troubled protagonist, is an introverted lawyer. Intense friendships are everything to him. Fearing intimacy as much as he hungers for it, his physical and mental well-being are at stake. The book and the play, both requiring total surrender, test the profound limits and potential of love.

To learn more about A Little Life, click here

Suzan-Lori Parks’ TOPDOG/UNDERDOG, a darkly comic fable of brotherly love and family identity, tells the story of two brothers, Lincoln (Hawkins) and Booth (Abdul-Mateen II), names given to them as a joke by their father. Haunted by the past and their obsession with the street con game, three-card monte, the brothers come to learn the true nature of their history.

To learn more about Topdog/Underdog, click here

Evoking myth and religion, the newest creation by Greek director-choreographer Dimitris Papaioannou dazzles with meticulous craft, imaginative play, and visual intensity. Like The Great Tamer, his internationally acclaimed, Next Wave 2019 sold-out sensation, Transverse Orientation induces awe on a massive scale, set to the music of Vivaldi. With dreamlike, painterly composition—and the rendering of a bull, in all of its lifelike power—it will make you wonder what’s real. Papaioannou—one of the first choreographers to create new work for Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater Wuppertal in 45 years—exacts striking formal language, along with the best of experimental theater art.

To learn more about Transverse Orientation, click here

The beloved ancient Korean musical storytelling form of pansori fuses with K-pop and Greek tragedy in an incredible production from the National Theater of Korea and visionary Singaporean director Ong Keng Sen. K-pop producer and Parasite composer Jung Jae-il created the original music in collaboration with renowned pansori master Ahn Sook-sun, a Living National Treasure in South Korea. Set after the sacking of Troy, Trojan Women sweeps audiences up in the heartbreak and determination of the city’s female survivors. Through a whirlwind of music, dance, and theater—brought to life by over 25 singers, actors, and musicians—emerges a stunning portrait of resilience in the face of war and occupation.

After sold-out runs at the National Theater of Korea in Seoul and Singapore International Arts Festival followed by acclaimed runs in London, Amsterdam and Vienna, Trojan Women finally comes to BAM for its US debut.

To learn more about Trojan Women, click here