Breaking: Encores! Will Bring Back ME AND MY GIRL, GRAND HOTEL and More in 2018 Season!

Arlene Shuler, President & CEO, today announced programming for New York City Center's 2017-18 season. The season will open with the annual Fall for Dance Festival, featuring 20 companies in five unique programs. The ten-day festival will feature three world premiere commissions: Kyle Abraham (2015 City Center Choreography Fellow) will create a work for his company Abraham.In.Motion; Troy Schumacher will create a work for Miami City Ballet; and Michelle Dorrance (2016-17 City Center Choreography Fellow) will create an extended, full-length version of her acclaimed 2015 FFD Festival Commission, Myelination. In October, Matthew Bourne's New Adventures will return to City Center with the double Olivier Award-winning production of The Red Shoes. For this special City Center engagement, New Adventures star Ashley Shaw, who originated the role, and NYCB principal dancer Sara Mearns, making her debut as a guest star with the company, will alternate in the role of Victoria Page. City Center's Principal Dance Company, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, will return in November for their 47th consecutive season at City Center.

The previously announced engagement of Brigadoon begins on November 15 with the New York City Center Annual Gala honoring City Center Co-Chair Stacey Mindich. Directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon, Brigadoon will reunite musical theater stars Kelli O'Hara and Steven Pasquale and will feature Wheeldon's leading man from An American in Paris, Robert Fairchild. In response to popular demand, a seventh performance has been added on Sunday, November 19, at 7pm. Funds raised at all performances will allow City Center to make the performing Arts Accessible to the widest possible audience by subsidizing affordable tickets throughout the year.

This spring, New York City Center's Tony-honored Encores! series, led by artistic director Jack Viertel and music director Rob Berman, will celebrate its 25th anniversary season, beginning with an original Encores! production Hey, Look Me Over!, a showcase of songs and scenes from beloved musicals that Encores! hasn't gotten to-yet.

Grand Hotel, The Musical, which follows the comings and goings of the colorful patrons of post-war Berlin's most prestigious hotel, will follow in March.

The season will close with Me and My Girl, the first Encores! show to have originated on London's West End rather than Broadway. A music-hall comedy that became the toast of England in 1937, it enjoyed a hugely successful revival on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1980s.

Other highlights of the spring season include Flamenco Festival 2018-with performances by Ballet Nacional de Espana, Eva Yerbabuena, and Jesu?s Carmona-and the ¡Cuba Hoy! festival of music and dance which will include the US debut of international ballet superstar Carlos Acosta's new Havana-based company Acosta Danza, an evening of Afro-Cuban music curated by and including Grammy Award-winner Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, and a series of talks and a masterclass with today's most vibrant Cuban artists and luminaries. Two companies that have long called City Center home, Dance Theatre of Harlem and Martha Graham Dance Company, will also return this spring.

The acclaimed Encores! Off-Center series will return in summer 2018 under the leadership of artistic director Michael Friedman. Programming for the 2018 Off-Center season will be announced at a later date.

City Center continues to bring the backstage center stage with artist talks, livestreamed events, and master classes that offer audiences an intimate exchange with today's leading artists. New last season, the master class series Front and Center: Learning from the Masters will return, offering a unique opportunity for emerging musical theater artists to explore everything from composition and auditioning to vocal technique with Broadway luminaries. Studio 5 at City Center will continue to offer behind?the?scenes conversations and performances featuring today's great dance artists.

Tickets can be purchased online at NYCityCenter.org, by calling 212.581.1212, or in person at the City Center Box Office. New York City Center is located at 131 West 55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues.