Little Island's Dance Festival to Kick Off Tomorrow

Little Island, New York City's new public park in Hudson River Park by W. 13th Street, will begin performances for the 2021 Dance Festival tomorrow, Wednesday, September 15. The percussive dance focused festival is Co-curated by Little Island Artist-in-Residence Ayodele Casel and Torya Beard and will run through Sunday, September 19. The festival will celebrate National Dance Day on September 18th with the premiere of new work by Josh Prince, Ray Mercer, Darrell Moultrie, and Tiffany Rea-Fisher and will culminate with a showcase of young and mature dancers and conversations that you won't want to miss. The majority of festival programming is free with entrance to the park and tickets for evening events in The Amph are on-sale now at littleisland.org.

The Dance Festival features tap artists, classical and contemporary Indian dance, African drumming, and more in a variety of performances. This park-wide takeover of percussive dance forms will fill Little Island's spaces with joy and rhythms. The line-up includes Aaron Mattocks; The Afro-Latineers; Barkha Patel; Brinae Ali & Sean Jones' Dizzy Spells Brinda Guha; Crystal Monee Hall; Eddie Hernandez; Danni Gee; Earl Mosely's Diversity of Dance; Evidence, A Dance Company; House of Xtravaganza; Jared Alexander Sprague; Leo Manzari; Leonardo Sandoval & Music from the Sole; Maurice Chestnut's Dance Therapy; Michela Marino Lerman's LOVE MOVEMENT; Michiyaya Dance, Morgan James and Doug Wamble; MOVE|NYC|; Paradise Drummers; Rokafella; It's Showtime NYC; Ted Louis Levy; Tomoe Carr; and more.

For a full schedule of Dance Festival programming visit https://littleisland.org/dance-festival.

Health and Safety Protocols for Ticketed Events

In accordance with current New York State and CDC guidelines, both vaccinated and unvaccinated guests can attend ticketed events. Unvaccinated visitors will be required to wear their masks when they cannot maintain 6-feet of distance from others. Children under the age of 2 are not required to wear a mask.

Ticketing

While the majority of the Dance Festival programming can be experienced for free, evening events hosted in The Amph will be ticketed. Through this distribution, they hope to make their shows as accessible to as many New Yorkers as possible-30% of tickets are distributed for free to Little Island's non-profit partners including the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development, Greenwich House, Hudson Guild, PS 33, The Door, and Westbeth; 40% of tickets will be sold at $25 and distributed through the Theatre Development Fund; and 30% of tickets will be sold through Little Island's website at $65 for regular price and $25 for seniors and children. All tickets are general admission.

All tickets will be electronic/mobile-only and are available for purchase now by visiting www.littleisland.org and tdf.org. There will be no tickets available to reserve on-site. Your ticket also serves as your timed entry reservation to the park.

Savory Hospitality will serve local and responsibly sourced food and beverage daily including Breakfast and coffee from 7:00 am to 10:30am; Lunch from 11:30 am to 4:00pm; and 5:00 pm to 11:00 pm. Little Island Food and Beverage is designed for all ages to explore the intersection between food and art in an environment that is welcoming, whimsical, playful, relaxing, and fun.