It will feature Joyful tributes to iconic New York City artists and institutions, BAAND Together Dance Festival, a performance commemorating Juneteenth, and more.
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts today announced the first Summer for the City. Unveiled by Shanta Thake, Chief Artistic Officer of LCPA, the three-month initiative takes a new approach to LCPA's summer season that activates the entire campus under one banner.
"One of the most basic jobs of the arts is to help heal. This summer we will do exactly that, with moments to rejoice, reclaim, and remember within a city transformed," said Shanta Thake, Ehrenkranz Chief Artistic Officer of LCPA, appointed August 2021. "This season is rooted in our fundamental programming values: offering artistic and civic programs reflective of the City of New York, a majority of them free; prioritizing collaboration and first asking artists and their communities what they want from Lincoln Center; being a home for experimentation; and inviting New Yorkers to actively participate in what we will create together."
"The season Shanta and the team have curated captures the moment and so much more-incorporating beloved programming of Lincoln Center summers past into something fresh, new, and thoroughly New York," said Henry Timms, President and CEO of LCPA. "We all seek a remedy for the upheaval and pain of the past two years. Art can help provide it: from group singalongs to celebrations of important milestones missed or truncated. We must empower ourselves to let joy back in, together."
Held over three months and featuring hundreds of free events,
this year's Summer for the City has three central themes:
Rejoice, Reclaim, Remember
Highlights include:
Coming together to rejoice after a period of such challenge and crisis.
Central to the summer season is collective recovery of some of the traditions and rituals that were taken from us:
Offering a place to recognize our losses and a space for collective healing is an essential part of the summer:
Presented as part of Festival of New York, Summer for the City builds on the success of Lincoln Center's 2021 Restart Stages, which created an outdoor performing art center so that the arts could continue during the pandemic. That initiative attracted an audience of more than 250,000 in person, nearly a quarter of whom were visiting Lincoln Center for the first time.
Summer for the City will animate every corner of the outdoor campus across 10 stages, as well as some of the indoor venues, with more than 300 artistic and civic activations. Stages will include:
Appointed in August 2021, this will be Shanta Thake's first full season at Lincoln Center. Her new approach moves towards a seasonal model, unifying activities under a single curatorial idea, and deepens artistic and civic connections in order to expand reach. These tenets will guide LCPA's programming year-round in the new David Geffen Hall and across campus. Additional programs will be announced in the coming months.
Summer for the City has been curated to help deepen Lincoln Center's service to particular communities, including the Latinx/e, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI), Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQIA+ communities-along with expanding offerings for families with concerts, workshops, Storytimes, and Family Dance Days. The season also offers a multitude of events that celebrate and center Deaf and disabled identity, including Deaf Broadway's Sweeney Todd, ILL-Abilities, Inside/Out presented by Ping Chong, and an Evening of Access Magic, featuring a Silent Disco, as well as adapted dance classes throughout the summer, and incorporating live captioning, Music: Not Impossible wearable technology for Deaf and hard-of-hearing audience members during select performances, and ASL-interpretation and sensory-friendly elements throughout the season's offerings. The campus will also host dozens of pop-up performances, wellness events, graduations, voter engagement and polling, blood drives, and more as part of the summer season.
"We're thrilled to welcome many artists this summer making their Lincoln Center debuts and are especially pleased the season includes beautiful offerings from so many of our resident organizations," said Shanta Thake. "We will complement their work, and honor and learn from our past while not being bound by the ways things have always been done. This is just the beginning of a new LCPA that is intentional about collaboration and participation, ensures a majority of our programming is free, and reflects the multifaceted communities of New York."
Entry to all Summer for the City performances and events at Damrosch Park, The Oasis on Josie Robertson Plaza, the David Rubenstein Atrium, The Deck, Hearst Plaza, and The Speakeasy on Jaffe Drive will be available for free via General Admission-first-come, first-served. In addition to General Admission, we're offering a free Advance Reservation option for select Summer for the City events held at Damrosch Park, "The Oasis," and Hearst Plaza. With Advance Reservation, guests can get priority access to events by booking ahead of time. Event admission is only guaranteed until 10 minutes before showtime. Tickets for performances in Alice Tully Hall and the Rose Theater will be available on a Choose-What-You-Pay basis. More at SummerForTheCity.org.
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