By Harlem Stage
Photos: Harlem Stage
(HARLEM, NY – May 3, 2025) — Harlem Stage, the world-renowned performing arts institution igniting the artistic freedom of performing artists of the Global Majority, today unveiled further highlights for its iconic signature series, celebrating dance – E-Moves Festival: A Movement. For more than 25 years, E-Moves has convened the world’s leading choreographers, dancers, dance companies, and artists of the Global Majority in an exploration of movement and message. Beginning May 8 and running through June 14, this year’s presentation of the annual series will feature an exciting lineup in dance and will mark the culmination of Harlem Stage’s 2024/2025 Season “When We Are Heard” – the inaugural season of the institution’s new CEO & Artistic Director, Dr. Indira Etwaroo.
With over a month of programming planned, the 2025 E-Moves Festival: A Movement will open with the illustrious Bebe Miller Company (BMC) making its Harlem Stage debut for two days of performances (Thu, May 8 & Fri, May 9) set to commemorate the cross-disciplinary company’s 40 year journey in producing new works that delve into the human condition through the physical language of dance. BMC was formed in 1985 by visionary and acclaimed award-winning choreographer Bebe Miller who has since then created more than 50 dance works for the company. Named a Master of African American Choreography by the Kennedy Center in 2005, Miller is one of the most celebrated choreographers in contemporary dance. For its first Harlem Stage appearance, BMC will premiere a new ensemble work with Indifferent Forest (2025) centered around how learnings from the forest inspire new approaches to interdependence and dancing on shared ground. The shows will also include two powerful solos from Miller’s canon of work, Rain (1989) and Rhythm Studies (1999) – both standing as an expression of her faith in the moving body as a record of thought, experience, and beauty.
E-Moves will also feature a night of conversation and performance with When We Dance, The Son Also Rises: Black Men in Dance, An Evening of Conversation, Choreography, and Cocktails (Mon, June 2). Curated by Ronald K. Alexander (Faculty, Ailey School) and Calvin Royal III (Principal Dancer, American Ballet Theatre), the event will offer reflections by Black male artists in the field of dance as they look back at what has been, acknowledge the here and now, and envision what lies ahead. This conversation will serve as a moment to contemplate the complexity, intersectionality, and beauty of diversity of Black men in dance, while also recognizing shared values and commonalities. Participants include: Ronald K. Brown, Founder and Director of Evidence Dance Company; Robert Garland, Artistic Director of Dance Theatre of Harlem; Desmond Richardson, Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Complexions Contemporary Ballet; and Matthew Rushing, Interim Artistic Director of The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre. The evening includes a special tribute to the late Joanne Robinson Hill, a former dancer, esteemed member of the arts education community, and advocate of the arts and a performance by Babatunji Johnson, a dance artist and choreographer from Alonzo King LINES Ballet. A wine reception will follow the discussion.
To close out the Festival, Harlem Stage will present the premiere of SOAK (Fri, June 13 & Sat, June 14), a place-specific piece created at Harlem Stage by interdisciplinary artists Eiko Otake and DonChristian Jones. Born and raised in Japan and a resident of New York since 1976, Otake worked for more than 40 years as Eiko & Koma and, since 2014, has been directing her own projects. In 2017, Otake began working with multimedia artist and director Jones whose work – greatly informed by his time spent painting murals on Rikers Island with incarcerated youth and teaching at Harvey Milk High School/Hetrick-Martin Institute – has exhibited and performed in spaces such as The Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA. The pair joined forces on Otake’s ongoing piece – The Duet Project: Distance is Malleable, an evolving and open-ended series of experiments in collaboration. In SOAK, Otake and Jones explore the concept of water as a shared origin, and the body as rivers of memories. Drawing upon their singular and dynamic history of collaboration, they collide toward many tomorrows.
“In an age defined by fragmentation and discord, dance endures as a profound language of unity. It speaks across boundaries, transcending the limits of words and ideologies, inviting us into a shared experience of being,” shared Dr. Indira Etwaroo, CEO & Artistic Director, Harlem Stage. “At the E-Moves Festival, we reclaim a deeper understanding of one another, finding harmony not in sameness, but in the beauty of our differences. In this moment of division, dance becomes a beacon—a testament to our collective resilience, and a call to move forward, together.”
TICKETS: Ticket prices start at $25.To purchase tickets for events under E-Moves Festival: A Movement, please click HERE
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Harlem Stage’s 2024 – 2025 Season and our E-Moves Series is made possible, in part, through the generous support of The Diana King Memorial Fund Presented by the Charles and Lucille King Family, Ford Foundation, Lambent Foundation/Tides Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, The Thompson Family Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Jewish Communal Fund, Altman Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Ruth Foundation for the Arts, The Leonard and Robert Weintraub Family Foundation, The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, The Hearst Foundations, Jerome Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, MacMillan Family Foundation, Francena T. Harrison Foundation Trust, Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, and Metzger-Price Fund. Additionally, this program is supported, in part, by public funds from the 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; and the National Endowment for the Arts.
About Harlem Stage
Harlem is Our Home. The World is Our Stage.
Harlem Stage, a 42-year-old radical socio-cultural artistic laboratory, inspires world class, innovative works by artists of the Global Majority to ignite artistic freedom. The New York Times has hailed Harlem Stage as “an invaluable incubator of talent” and Vijay Iyer has shared, “It is shockingly rare that artists of color are invited to become full participants in the national conversation, to respond to today’s world, and to offer a glimpse of tomorrow. I’ve looked all over for arts organizations that might prioritize new and cutting edge work by artists of color, and Harlem Stage stands out as one of the only presenters in the US that makes this their goal.” Iyer is one of many visionary artists who joined Harlem Stage in the earlier stages of their careers to create within this incubator of the future and he, along with four others within the Harlem Stage family, have joined the ranks of MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship awardees: Kyle Abraham, Bill T. Jones, Jason Moran, and Cecil Taylor.
Harlem Stage, neighbor to Columbia University and The City College of New York, welcomes audiences from all walks of life to its home, the historic site in West Harlem that was once a part of the Croton Aqueduct system—a great engineering feat of the 19th century—which supplied much needed fresh drinking water to New York City, beginning in 1890, twenty-seven years following the Emancipation Proclamation. The Romanesque Revival style accounts for much of the building’s grandeur and monumental beauty.
