La MaMa Moves!
Dance festival 2026
April 13 – May 10, 2026
Various Venues
66 East 4th Street
&
74A East 4th Street
New York, NY 10003
Curated by Nicky Paraiso
Guest Curators: Martita Abril, Blaze Ferrer, Adham Hafez
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival continues to support La MaMa’s commitment to presenting diverse performance styles that challenge audience’s perception of dance by featuring performance/installations, experimental film screenings & public symposiums which address dance artists’ engagement with the current political climate, as well as honoring diasporic histories and legacy, ancestral inspirations and inter-generational dialogue.
A Message from the Curator,
We gather together to celebrate La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival 2026’s 21st anniversary season with many of the same concerns and issues we have experienced and lived through in recent times. We continue to resist and persevere during a fraught, turbulent time of political & economic crisis, sometimes unfortunately with overt, physical challenges to our basic freedoms and democracy.
If there is a specific concern during this current season of La MaMa NOW, perhaps it’s an ongoing search by a disparate group of fierce individual creators forging their own journeys while simultaneously finding ways to co-exist within meaningful circles of community: artistic creators with integral artistic visions, working across differing aesthetic viewpoints and (hopefully) some common political goals. Working together from within the system can be a subversive act in itself. As we continue to celebrate the visceral power of dance, movement, and performance, we deeply hope and pray for peace in the world.
We thank the many choreographers, performers, musicians and visual design artists who have created and contributed amazing, innovative new work during the last twenty-one years, and will continue to make for future seasons and generations!
Welcome back, dear audience.
Much love to all,
Nicky Paraiso
Curator, La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival
Individual tickets for shows can be found below on this page.
Ticket prices are inclusive of all fees.
upcoming shows
April 16-19, 2026
Ellen Stewart Theatre
by Patricia Hoffbauer & Company
Center for Fiction: This is Not May 68′
April 16-19, 2026
The Club Theatre
Hunter College MFA Dance Faculty
Jade Charon’s
Gold pylon
Tiffany Merritt-Brown’s
Tender is the Night
April 30-May 1, 2026
The Club Theatre
Findlay//Sandsmark (Iver Findlay and Marit Sandsmark)
Iteration IV (for Allen)
May 2-3, 2026
The Club Theatre
Shared Evening
BamBam Frost (Sweden/USA)
YES
Ori Flomin (USA/Israel)
Settle In
May 7-10, 2026
The Club Theatre
Shared Evening
Pioneers Go East Collective
CROSSROADS Series (Guest Curation)
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival 2026
La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival continues to support La MaMa’s commitment to presenting diverse performance styles that challenge audience’s perception of dance by featuring performance/installations, experimental film screenings & public symposiums which address dance artists’ engagement with the current political climate, as well as honoring diasporic histories and legacy, ancestral inspirations and inter-generational dialogue.
SPecial thanks to
John Jasperse Company, Keith A. Thompson & danceTactics, Jesse Zaritt & Sara Shelton Mann, Megumi Eda, Jordan Demetrius Lloyd with Owen Prum, Hunter College & NYU Tisch Dance MFA Students, Guest Curators Martita Abril, Blaze Ferrer, Adham Hafez, and more to be announced.
BIOS
Nicky Paraiso is an actor, singer, musician, writer, curator, solo performance artist. He has been a fixture of the NY downtown performance scene for almost five decades. He is Director of Programming for The Club at La MaMa, and Curator for the annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival, which will celebrate its 20th season in April 2025. He has worked as a performer with vanguard artists Jeff Weiss & Carlos Ricardo Martinez, Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, Yoshiko Chuma & The School of Hard Knocks. Nicky has also performed in the works of Anne Bogart, Laurie Carlos, Jessica Hagedorn, Robbie McCauley, Richard Elovich, Dan Froot, Fred Holland, Dan Hurlin, Christopher Williams, among many others. He has also performed with Ma-Yi Theatre Company & National Asian-American Theatre Company (NAATCO). Nicky is the recipient of a 1987 Bessie Award for his Collective Performance, the Lilah Kan Red Socks Award, a 2012 BAX Arts & Artists in Progress Arts Management Award, a 2018 TCG Fox Fellowship as an Actor of Distinguished Achievement, and the 2019 (NY Innovative Theatre) Ellen Stewart Award for Stewardship. Nicky is an acclaimed solo performance artist and has written & performed the following solo shows: Asian Boys directed by Laurie Carlos (Performance Space 122), Houses & Jewels directed by Laurie Carlos (DTW), and House/Boy directed by Ralph B. Pena (La MaMa, Dublin Theatre Festival, Singapore Performance Initiation Festival). Nicky’s most recent full-length performance, now my hand is ready for my heart: intimate histories, directed & designed by John Jesurun, premiered at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre in March-April 2019, performing with choreographer/dancers Irene Hultman, Jon Kinzel, Vicky Shick, Paz Tanjuaquio. He was a Gala honoree at Movement Research in April 2016. Nicky is most recently a recipient of the 2024 Mabou Mines Ruth Maleczech Award aka RUTHIE.
The 21st annual La MaMa Moves! Dance Festival (Spring 2026) is made possible by New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Jerome Robbins Foundation, Québec Government Office in New York, and The Shubert Foundation. Opening Night Reception sponsored by Sobaya.
