Karen Bernard | Lara Kramer Dance | Lisa Parra

New Dance Alliance presents the 39th Annual Performance Mix Festival

June 5-8, 2025, at Abrons Arts Center’s Underground Theater

The 39th annual Performance Mix Festival brings together 40 innovative experimental performance, sound, and film artists over four days in June. The 2025 festival is curated by New Dance Alliance Artistic and Executive Director Karen Bernard, Managing Director Alexandra Doyle, and artist panelists Arantxa Araujo, Chloë Engel, Johanna Meyer, Jordan Deal, and Estrellx Supernova. In addition, films were selected in collaboration with Ciné-Corps.

Saturday, June 7 

Saturday Night Special | 7:30pm-9:30pm, followed by a reception: Karen Bernard | Lara Kramer Dance | Lisa Parra 

Karen Bernard / Fleeting Glimpse

A black wooden chair. A black sequined curtain. A black faux fur blanket. A black laptop. A woman with white hair dressed in black sequined shorts and a matching black top. Choreographer Karen Bernard offers these disparate visual elements to the viewer in her latest work, Fleeting Glimpse, only to connect them by revealing their hidden inner vitality. Through surprisingly spare and inventive movement, Bernard demonstrates that movement itself is life, and despite its fleeting and transitory nature, we experience its pulse through gestures, sideways looks, and subtle shifts that reflects an internal light.

Lara Kramer Dance / Gorgeous Tongue

Anchored in this world and orbiting a universe beyond, a lone performer unfolds memories on stage through rhythmic scores. For Gorgeous Tongue, Lara Kramer embodies stories, dreams, and songs that stem from her Anishinaabe lineage. Entering Kramer’s artistic constellation is to embrace the past and usher in a new world. Gorgeous Tongue is a celebration of Indigenous transmission, transformation, and futurity.

Lisa Parra / family reunion side two

family reunion side two is an interdisciplinary solo performance based on audio tape recordings of Lisa Parra’s mother’s family reunion in 1999. With this work, Parra contemplates how prosody and memory resonate in both movement and vocalization.