Summer dance festival season is heating up across the country—and the pond.

Finding space to dance is a perpetual, nearly universal challenge for dance companies and schools. But a flurry of recent creative partnerships with real estate developers has resulted in opulent new facilities for a handful of organizations around the country.
At first glance, the trend seems too good to be true. Thousands of new or renovated square feet, at a price a nonprofit dance organization can afford?

The 92NY program aims to show how Paul Taylor’s experimental 1957 piece “Seven New Dances” laid the foundation for his later “kinetic” work.

In 2019, Lauren Lovette seemed to have it all—she was a star principal at New York City Ballet and was Vail Dance Festival’s artist in residence. But inside, she was ill at ease. “I never really enjoyed performing,” says Lovette, now 32. Intrigued by choreography, she had created her first piece, For Clara, three years earlier for NYCB’s 2016 Fall Fashion Gala.

How can aspiring professional dancers navigate this complicated phase of their careers? According to the experts, the key is identifying programs that nurture young dancers without taking advantage of them.

Every dancer has a dream role. For some, it’s one character they’ve dreamed of dancing, often from a young age. For others, it extends beyond the stage—a dream role can be less about portraying a specific part or dancing in a particular show and more about finding a career path that feels perfectly suited to them.

The past several years have brought momentous change to the Paul Taylor Dance Company: a new director, a wave of new hires, a pandemic, the naming of a choreographer in residence, all since 2018. It seems that the company has emerged from the pandemic with a new sense of mission, though with its core of fundamental values intact.

Summer is heating up, with major premieres, triumphant returns and exciting mixed-company lineups happening from coast-to-coast and across the pond. Here’s what caught our eye.