Zara Naber | Cristina Moya-Palacios | Emily Kyoko Shari | Makayla Peterson/Monét Movement Productions: The Collective | Prostalgia HD

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.

Sunday, June 8 

Program D | 4:30pm: Zara Naber | Cristina Moya-Palacios | Emily Kyoko Shari | Makayla Peterson/Monét Movement Productions: The Collective | Prostalgia HD

Ciné-Corps film: Zara Naber, Athaar, 2021

Athaar, which means “ruins” in Arabic, is a story about the identities people create, adopt, and reject as they question the traditional constructs of freedom. “The Western world has claimed the notion of freedom as its own,” says director Zara Naber. “Freedom is not seen as belonging to Arabs. It’s American, European, Western. Eli El Sultan is the incredibly sculpted dancer at the heart of this performance film. As a Parisian of Middle Eastern heritage, he regales the viewer with an elevated rendition of his popular belly dance cabaret performance. Sultan’s slow and undulating movements are a physical expression of his sexual liberation and queer identity, ameliorated by clothing and a dance style traditionally performed by women.

Cristina Moya-Palacios / All Immerican Dream Girl!

All Immerican Dream Girl! aims to shine a light on the complexity of the immigrant experience in the United States by commenting on the American dream from the perspective of a Latina “Dreamer” or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient. Through overwhelming bouts of extreme physicality, gestural sequences, and social dance sections that never seem to settle, viewers enter a simulation of the taxing cycles, frustrating resets and restarts, unraveling, and inability to move forward that the immigration process entails. She takes us on a journey to nowhere with completely pathless attempts at assimilation that ultimately lead to a reckoning of the crumbling facade this empire has tried to sell us.

Emily Kyoko Shari / circle:bloom

circle:bloom consists of a bespoke circle fabricated from felt and rope which the artist interacts with using short movement phrases stemming from Laban/Bartenieff floorwork. Her body becomes a tool that activates the sculpture, transforming its presence and generating a symbiotic relationship between her body and the sculpture, giving form to a series of abstract emotional states.

Makayla Peterson/Monét Movement Productions: The Collective / demerara

A collection of poems selected from Brown Sugar Lit’s published zines exploring the themes of identity, femininity, and Black strength through spoken word and dance. At the heart of the movement is the continued embodiment of Black woman liberation, connection to their ancestors, and the reclamation of the Caribbean dancing body through joy and resistance.

Festival Finale
Prostalgia HD / LORE: Hansel/Gretel

LORE: Hansel/Gretel is a communal re-imagining of the classic Brothers Grimm folktale as an immersive dancefloor experience. Spectators are invited to dance while the story is told through original spoken word narration layered into a DJ set, exploring themes of hunger, abandonment, and triumph through self-empowerment.