The Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance Launches in June

Photo by Lawrence Sumulong

Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival Anchors 

Summer for the City Season Centered on Dance

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) announces the launch of The Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance, which anchors this year’s Summer for the City, with a focus on movement, community, and artistry. The season features international and New York-based talent, numerous commissions, wellness events, and new education initiatives—all free or Choose-What-You-Pay.

The inaugural Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival—a new, biannual festival that will be offered each summer and winter—establishes a consistent and ambitious home for contemporary dance at Lincoln Center.

Beginning June 18 in Alice Tully Hall, five international companies will offer cutting-edge works exploring different dance forms through themes of personal heritage and origin, identity and transformation, and the climate crisis. Two U.S. premieres and two New York premieres populate the Festival programs, by choreographers from the United Kingdom, South Korea, Belgium, Spain, and France. Educational offerings this summer will include pre-performance talks and professional dance workshops with Akram Khan Company and Sung Im Her, as well as the launch of a professional development cohort for early-career dance professionals to participate in behind-the-scenes learning during the Festival. The second iteration of the Festival, in January 2027, will present US-based companies.

Established from the largest single programming gift in LCPA‘s history, the Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance paves the way for the most dynamic and innovative contemporary dance from across the globe to join the cultural crossroads of Lincoln Center, honoring the distinguished legacy of dance on campus and investing in the next generation of dance artists.

Donald Borror began as Director of the Collaborative in December of last year and spearheads the biannual Contemporary Dance Festival alongside a variety of programmatic resources and collaborations to support dancers, choreographers, and companies in New York City and beyond.

Also this summer, a new weekly outdoor dance series on Hearst Plaza will run for eight weeks, beginning in June. This year’s Dance Encounters spotlights New York-based companies in intimate and dynamic performances that offer audiences the delight of up-close and personal experiences. The series features a wide variety of works commissioned or reimagined to be enjoyed al fresco, in conversation with the architecture of the Lincoln Center campus.

Summer for the City Dance Programming Highlights Include:

Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival:

• The New York premiere of Basel-based choreographer Jeremy Nedd’s from rock to rock…aka how magnolia was taken for granite, which explores the Milly Rock, a viral dance move with infinite possibilities (Jun 18 – 19);
• the New York premiere of Yinka Esi Graves’s The Disappearing Act, shining a light on the African roots of flamenco (Jun 20 – 21);
• South Korean choreographer Sung Im Her | Her Project uses pulsating movement to create a sense of urgency around the changing environment with the U.S. premiere of 1 Degree Celsius (Jun 24-25);
• Rachid Ouramdane | Compagnie de Chaillot presents TORDRE, an intimate, sensitive duet celebrating atypical physicality (Jun 27-28); and
• the U.S. premiere of Akram Khan Company’s newest work, Thikra: Night of Remembering, which explores heritage and ancestry in a desert landscape with an international female ensemble (Jul 2-5), in collaboration with Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.

Dance Encounters:

• Three new commissions, including Mindscape from Shen Wei Dance Arts / Guangdong Modern Dance Company (Jul 22-25) as part of Chinese Arts Week, co-commissioned with American Dance Festival; Naiad Metal by Butoh artist Vangeline (Aug 5-8); and a world premiere digital commission of a new dance film by EICHTERLING, Bret Easterling and Julia Eichten, titled WITH LOVE (Jul 15-17). Other performances include Omari Wiles / Les Ballet Afrik (Jun 17-18); Brooklyn-based Ogemdi Ude’s outdoor version of her celebrated performance MAJOR (Jun 24-27); Anna Sperber’s Bow Echo (Jul 1-3); and Benjamin Akio Kimitch’s Tiger Hands (Jul 29-31);
• Two film series, Movement on Film: Athletic Shorts (Jul 15-17) and Born to Fly: Elizabeth Streb vs. Gravity (Jul 10)

Chinese Arts Week dance events include Chinatown Records and Red Silk Dancers, Zhao Family’s Awakening Lion Dance and the Fumei Youth Yingge Team from Guangdong China, and Kung Fu Hip Hop 功夫街舞.

On Wednesday, June 10, Summer for the City kicks off with a triple header of dance:

• KEIGWIN + COMPANY’s Rhapsody, a community dance work featuring 30 New Yorkers;
• Inayat: A Duet for Four merges two ancient north Indian performance traditions, featuring Aga Khan Music Award Winner Asin Khan Langaand the exceptional SAZ, as well as emerging virtuoso dancer Tarini Tripathi, and
• a Swing Dance Party with Caleb Teicher & Company and Eyal Vilner Big Band

This summer also sees the return of the BAAND Together Dance Festival, made possible by CHANEL; a daylong celebration, Street Dance Takeover: Beats, Battles, and Breaking, featuring multigenerational artists like French choreographer Saido Lehlouh with Wild Cat; two new works at the David Rubenstein Atrium, The Ocean Keeps No Memory of the Lines by Christopher Núñez and Tamisha A. Guy’s In the Depths of Blue; the ever-popular social dance series across swing, Hip Hop, salsa, ballroom, and more; our silent discos under the stars, outdoors on Josie Robertson Plaza; and so much more!

A link to the online event calendar for all dance events can be found here. 

Summer for the City has established itself as a quintessential New York City summer destination, welcoming more than 1.6 million visitors since launching in 2022. 

A link to the online calendar of all Summer for the City events can be found at SummerForTheCity.org. 

About The Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance

The Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance was created in March 2025 following an unprecedented $50 million founding gift from Lynne and Richard Pasculano—the largest single programming donation in LCPA’s history. An ambitious initiative that expands contemporary dance across the Lincoln Center campus, the Collaborative paves the way for the most dynamic and innovative contemporary dance performances from across the globe to join the cultural crossroads of Lincoln Center, honoring the distinguished legacy of dance on campus and investing in the next generation of dance artists. Envisioned are two dance festivals annually, as well as a variety of resources and collaborations to support dancers, choreographers, and companies in New York City and beyond.

An Artistic Advisory Committee was established in March 2025 and worked with the LCPA programming team, led by Ehrenkranz Chief Artistic Officer Shanta Thake, to shape the foundational vision for the Collaborative’s activities for greatest impact and inclusivity within the ever-expanding contemporary dance sphere. Members included Kyle Abraham, Jody Gottfried Arnhold, Misty Copeland, Alicia Graf Mack, Alice Sheppard, Lane Sugata, and Eduardo Vilaro. Donald Borror was appointed to the newly created position of Director, Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance in December 2025.

Series in both the winter and summer, new commissions, opportunities for emerging dance artists, and investments in audience engagement will all be part of a holistic vision to expand the global dance community’s home at Lincoln Center—including collaborations with The Juilliard School, New York City Ballet, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and the School of American Ballet—while collaborating with industry colleagues to complement the vibrant work happening across New York City.

Contemporary dance is core to LCPA’s programming vision, embracing a range of global communities and drawing from the history of creativity on the Lincoln Center campus. Recent and upcoming presentations include international companies Aakash Odedra Company, Akram Khan, Boy Blue, Seoul Metropolitan Dance Theatre, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and Huang Yi; the U.S.-based Alonzo King LINES Ballet, Lil Buck, and Ragamala Dance Company; New York City companies A.I.M. by Kyle Abraham, Buglisi Dance Theatre, Ephrat Asherie Dance, GALLIM DANCE, Kinetic Light, Ladies of Hip-Hop, Heidi Latsky Dance, Les Ballet Afrik, Music from the Sole, Pam Tanowitz, and Urban Bush Women; the BAAND Together Dance Festival (Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem), made possible by CHANEL.

About Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center is a premier performing arts center and iconic civic cultural campus. A beacon for the arts in New York City and around the world, Lincoln Center believes the arts are fundamental to our humanity and should be accessible to all — connecting us to one another, expanding our individual and collective imaginations, and elevating our spirit. Opened in 1962, the 16-acre campus is home to eleven resident arts organizations dedicated to uplifting the role of art and artists in our society, providing a destination for global artistic voices, training the next generation of great artists, and creating unforgettable experiences for all New Yorkers: The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Film at Lincoln Center, Jazz at Lincoln Center, The Juilliard School, Lincoln Center Theater, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, The Metropolitan Opera, New York City Ballet, New York Philharmonic, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and School of American Ballet. Lincoln Center welcomes millions of people for thousands of performances each year, anchoring New York City’s legendary creative life and greatly impacting its civic and economic wellbeing.

About Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) is a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring the Lincoln Center campus is a destination that welcomes all — where every visitor, whether a native New Yorker or New Yorker for a day, can find inspiration, artistic innovation, and community in the creative achievements realized on campus. Year-round, we offer robust seasons of programming, representing a broad spectrum of performing arts disciplines and complementing the artistic and educational activities of the 10 fellow resident arts organizations with whom we share a home. LCPA presents hundreds of programs each year, offered primarily for free and Choose-What-You-Pay, helping ensure that the arts are at the center of civic life for all.

Contemporary Dance is made possible by the Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance – Lynne and Richard Pasculano, Founding Donors

Additional support is provided by the Mertz Gilmore Foundation and The Harkness Foundation for Dance

Endowment support is provided by the Blavatnik Family Foundation Fund for Dance

Lead support for Choose-What-You-Pay is provided by the Family of Robert Wood Johnson III

Major support is provided by the Scully Peretsman Foundation

Additional support is provided by the PNC Foundation

Lead support for Summer for the City Community Programming is provided by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF)

Major support for Summer for the City is provided by Chase

NewYork-Presbyterian is the Official Hospital of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

United Airlines is the Supporting Airline of Lincoln Center Presents

Steinway & Sons is the Preferred Piano Partner of Lincoln Center

Major support for Lincoln Center Presents and Summer for the City is provided by The Shubert Foundation, MOVADO Group Foundation, and Howard Gilman Foundation

BAAND Together Dance Festival is made possible by CHANEL

Additional support is provided by Mitsui & Co. (U.S.A.), Inc. and Park Lane New York

Endowment support is provided by the Blavatnik Family Foundation Fund for Dance, The Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Foundation, Oak Foundation, and PepsiCo Foundation

We are grateful to our Board of Directors for their leadership and generous support in making our work possible

Operation of Lincoln Center’s public plazas is supported in part with public funds provided by the City of New York 

Programs are made possible, in part, with public funds provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor, Mayor of the City of New York, the New York State Legislature and the New York City Council

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