American Dance Festival Reveal 2024 Season

The American Dance Festival has announced its 2024 season with a full summer performance schedule from June 13 to July 28 and additional performances in April, September, and October. With 49 performances by 24 acclaimed dance companies and choreographers from around the globe, featuring 11 world premieres, 12 ADF commissions, and 12 ADF debuts, ADF celebrates the diversity of modern dance and its community. 

“This season features a lineup of companies and artists revealing the broad range of modern dance at its best. We’ll present works of pure, artistic beauty as well as thought-provoking works addressing climate change, gender, and identity. We’ll offer immersive experiences, multimedia productions, works featuring unconventional stagecraft, and even a couple of joyous dance parties where the community and the artists are invited to dance the night away. There is no question that there will be something for everyone this summer,” says Jodee Nimerichter, ADF’s Executive Director.   

Program highlights include the presentation of the 2024 Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award for lifetime achievement to acclaimed choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar on Wednesday, July 17. The award will be presented to Zollar after the performance of her newest ADF co-commissioned work SCAT!... The Complex Lives of Al & Dot, Dot & Al Zollar by Urban Bush Women, the company she founded and led as artistic director for several decades. The globally celebrated Taiwanese company Hung Dance is making its US and ADF debut with Birdy, weaving Western mythology and Eastern traditions together through contemporary dance. ShaLeigh Dance Works returns with the world premiere of enVISION: The Next Chapter, an immersive, interdisciplinary performance that relies not on sight or sound but on the felt sense of sonic experiences and visual perceptions. Netta Yerushalmy’s MOVEMENT synthesizes over one hundred citations from an expansive range of dances across genres and cultures and will be presented by dancers from Korea, Senegal, Israel, Taiwan, and the US. Canada’s Radical System Art makes its ADF debut with MOI-Momentum of Isolation, which tackles topics of social isolation and the influence of technology on modern society. Live interactive video and sound surround the performers to shape a digital world, while stagecraft and puppeteering highlight how social isolation can disrupt our connection to reality.

Festival regulars returning this summer are Paul Taylor Dance Company, showing three classic works from its world-renowned repertory, and Pilobolus with classic favorites and new creations. ADF welcomes back Doug Varone and Dancers, performing Varone’s new two-part work, To My Arms/Restore, for one night only, and Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE, presenting Upside Down, Open Door, and The Equality of Night and Day (TEND) and featuring community members.

ADF School alum Kayla Farrish is making her ADF debut with Put Away the Fire, dear, a live dance-theater work mapping the journey of six BIPOC and marginalized characters traversing scenes and worlds through dance theater, storytelling, set design, and a score of reclaimed exploited Black American music. Fellow ADF School alumni Baye & Asa are returning with 4/2/3, an ADF co-commission focusing on climate change's generational impacts. It is a work divided into three sections for three generations of performers, examining the cooperation necessary to acknowledge this existential crisis. In Bob, a mid-career taxonomy of sorts, Milka Djordjevich confronts demands to optimize her female body and the market’s expectation to enhance her performance over time. 

The annual Footprints program bridges ADF’s performance series and its Summer Dance Intensive. The result is a brilliant evening of ADF-commissioned world premieres performed by ADF students. This year’s choreographers are ADF School alum and former faculty member David Dorfman, Dianne McIntyre, an artistic pioneer with a choreographic career of more than five decades, and Kate Weare, known for her startling combination of formal choreographic value and visceral, emotional interpretation. 

The Made in NC program features four world premieres of ADF commissions by North Carolina artists. This year’s artists are Dom-Sebastian Alexis, a Greensboro native, a Hip-Hop and Contemporary Juxtaposition Artist trained in various degrees of Street Dance, Social Grooves, and contemporary dance techniques. Durham-based Iyun Ashani Harrison collaborates with and presents the work of artists of color and women to expand racial and cultural diversity in ballet to attract new audiences. Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen, based in Western North Carolina, are passionate cross-genre collaborators who cultivate the craft of storytelling through movement while incorporating work by local writers, filmmakers, and musicians. Durham’s Stacy Wolfson and Curtis Eller have devised a unique compositional approach combining movement, music, and lyrics to create a peculiar and compelling hybrid of dance and song.

ADF’s audiences are invited to share the dance floor at The Fruit with incredible artists after the curtain falls. Ballet Hispánico kicks off ADF’s 2024 season with works engaging themes of gender, race, and identity within Latin culture and heritage, and ADF’s Latin Dance Party with Ballet Hispánico will be a joyous season-opening celebration for all on Friday, June 14. Les Ballet Afrik’s New York Is Burning highlights self-expression and radical acceptance in the face of adversity while contextualizing the importance of ballroom culture for Queer communities. Following the performance on June 28, the company invites everyone to the dance floor to celebrate the music and dance styles of Black and Latino Queer communities at ADF’s Dance Party. 

Ahead of ADF’s summer performance season, Londs Reuter will present GOOD EFFORT, a co-presentation with the North Carolina Museum of Art. In the fall, ADF will partner with the Nasher Museum of Art to present Yoggs Family Newsletter, created and performed by Chris Yon & Taryn Griggs. Black Label Movement rounds up the season with Battleground, a thought-provoking, physical, and innovative work presented in an outdoor dirt pit. 

2024 festival performances will be presented at venues throughout the triangle. Tickets go on sale on Tuesday, April 23rd, with prices ranging from $18 to $70 and can be purchased through ADF’s website or the Duke University Box Office. More detailed information about performances, venues, tickets, and performing companies, including photos, videos, and press reviews, are available at americandancefestival.org. 

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