Artistic Director Melissa Blanco Borelli

As we mark the 250th birthday of the United States, what do we have to celebrate? The ghosts of our nation’s past—slavery, genocide, extraction—are active forces haunting our burning present. 

Danceworks 2026 gathers choreographers, dancers, and audiences to ask: What does it mean to move together in a time of unraveling? How do we move through a world where some bodies are deemed disposable, where borders harden as seas rise, where the very ground beneath us is contested?

In this space, we don’t promise harmony. We offer the friction of real encounter. Through choreography and improvisation, we explore the politics of presence: the radical act of showing up, in all our differences, when everything tells us to retreat. Can collective movement—breathing, sweating, grieving in rhythm—forge something beyond mere survival?