12 Last Songs

Nice to meet you, what do you do?

12 Last Songs is part live exhibition, part epic performance. It’s about work and how we spend our time. Making a living. Finding your passion. Watching the clock. From midday to midnight on Saturday, January 17, real workers from New York City will perform paid shifts on stage, in front of a live audience. There are no actors. A builder might build a wall, a hairdresser might cut someone’s hair, a chef might prepare a meal. We’ll find out what they do, and how they see themselves in the world….

30 workers. 12 hours. Made for and with the people of NYC. 12 Last Songs frames the rhythms of the city through the people who make it work. There will be just 12 versions of 12 Last Songs taking place around the world. New York City is number 9. 12 Last Songs is unscripted, and therefore we don’t know what subjects might arise during the performance. It is important to note that we cannot guarantee what might be discussed.

An Ark

A new play for mixed reality featuring Ian McKellen, Golda Rosheuvel, Arinzé Kene, and Rosie Sheehy.

The renowned actors appear in front of you as you look through mixed reality glasses, allowing them to perform and speak directly to you. In this radically intimate reimagining of live theater, they draw you as an audience into a deeply personal exploration of what it means to live, to grieve, and to connect.

A genre-defying collaboration between Tony Award–winning writer Simon Stephens (Vanya, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), critically acclaimed director Sarah Frankcom (UK Theatre Award for Our Town), and mixed reality pioneer Todd Eckert, An Ark explores the elemental meaning of life with the energy and humanity that are the hallmarks of their work.

ART BATH

Art Bath draws from the tradition of the art salon to create a multi-sensory artistic journey. Known for fusing disciplines such as opera, music, dance, theater, and visual art, ART BATH presents an eclectic range of world-class performers, unexpected collaborations, and the thrill of new work unfolding in real time—all in a space transformed to invite curiosity, connection, and creative surprise.

Concept and Curation: Mara Driscoll and Liz Yilmaz

Featuring: Machine Dazzle (painting, sculpture, Queer performance), Lisel (experimental vocals and composition), Matthew Jamal (cello), Isabelle Ai Durrenberger (violin), Dual Rivet (contemporary dance), Jasmine Rice LaBeija (opera and drag)

BMP: Songbook Concert and Celebration

Beth Morrison Projects presents BMP: SONGBOOK, a live performance and multi-faceted celebration marking two decades of trailblazing innovation in American opera. Over two unforgettable evenings, BMP: SONGBOOK brings together extraordinary artists who helped shape BMP’s legacy, performing highlights from some of our most iconic productions.

Creatives in Motion: Showcase of Korean Emerging Artists

Presented by the Korean Cultural Center New York × Korea National University of Arts (K-Arts) Creatives in Motion is a collaborative project between the Korean Cultural Center New York and the Korea National University of Arts (K-Arts), created to showcase emerging Korean artists and connect them with local producers and audiences in New York. Running for three days from January 15, the program features six innovative performances across traditional Korean arts, contemporary dance, and creative music—offering a glimpse into the dynamic spirit and experimentation of Korea’s next generation of artists. At K-Arts, where drama, dance, music, film, fine arts, and traditional Korean arts come together, young creators are encouraged to cross boundaries and reshape artistic conventions. Each year, the university presents over 200 original works, extending beyond education to become a true platform for creation—where learning means reimagining the world through art. K-Arts in New York represents the next step of this vision, bringing selected artists to the global stage through Creatives in Motion. First introduced in Korea as K-Arts in New York 2026: Creatives in Motion Showcase, the program now carries the passion and imagination of K-Arts’ young creators to New York, bridging cultures through the universal language of performance.

DARKMATTER

In DARKMATTER, Cherish Menzo and her onstage partner Camilo Mejía Cortés explore ways to detach their bodies from public perception and their daily reality. Among other references, they look up to the sky, at dark matter, at black holes that meet and collide to give birth to a new, (afro)futuristic and enigmatic body. Menzo rids themselves of biased ways of looking at one’s own body, at that of the other, and at the stories we attribute to bodies in general. Together, Menzo and Cortés throw their bodies into complex conversations that they want to both enter into and transcend—a duality that feeds the performance. As in her previous project, JEZEBEL, Menzo stretches her movement vocabulary further by “Chopping and Screwing” her choreography via the Houston, Texas hip-hop remix technique in which the tempo of a song is sharply reduced and the pitch is lowered. By stretching the notions of time, the performing body generates new readings and perceptions. In DARKMATTER, Menzo aims to create a thorough reshuffling of our atoms, looking for a new form for—and way of looking at—our body and the complex outside world to which it relates.

Duration of Mountains and Seas (山海经 穿越)

Duration of Mountains and Seas (穿越·山海经) is a music showcase that reimagines ancient mythology, creating a fantastic universe where Chinese music meets electronica to traverse through time and space. Conceived and created by composer/ musician Hu Chenyun, the showcase includes the electronic music duo Frankfurt Helmet and a group of renowned musicians from the Shanghai Chinese Orchestra. This contemporary performance is inspired by the great classic of ancient Chinese mythology, Classic of Mountains and Seas (3rd Century B.C.), exploring a world of mythical beings and vast geographies. The creative intermingling of Chinese instruments such as suona, pipa, and konghou with electronic voices creates a space where technology and nature—and past and future—are placed in vibrant dialogue.

Half the Sky - Yin Mei Dance

Unspoken histories surface in an evening length dance work (World Premiere)

Renowned dancer and choreographer Yin Mei presents her latest work, Half the Sky, an evening-length dance and visual work rooted in the language of the body, responding to enduring mythologies surrounding women across generations. It features Marie Lloyd Paspe, Ching-I Chang, Miho Ryu, and Yin Mei, with a music score created and live performed by composer/sound designer Christian Frederickson.

How does a woman inhabit her own body? How can she claim ownership of it in the shadow of history—if that is even possible? It then extends the inquiry: in what ways can art and movement heal or simply acknowledge all the ghosts that inhabit this body?

Half the Sky merges dance, projection, and installation art into a choreographic and visual act of reclamation: rescuing the “blank page” from blankness. It’s a laboratory for “becoming”, where there is room for the unexpected moment to strike through space and time, leading to the breakthrough of true creative power. Yin Mei explores how the “becoming” of sensation must happen in an unexpected moment, a moment of silence where the body’s unspoken histories surface.

This project is supported by Wuhan Institute of Design and Sciences (WIDS) Jackie Chan Movie and Media College, Baryshnikov Arts, Topaz Arts, Danse Mirage Foundation, MAP Fund, and RF CUNY. Half the Sky was a 2024 New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project Finalist.

HILDEGARD

HILDEGARD is a work of operatic historical fiction about twelfth-century German Benedictine abbess/polymath St. Hildegard von Bingen. Set in 1147, the opera follows Hildegard as she receives visions from God. While transcribing these visions for Papal evaluation – a process that will decide her prophet or heretic – she enlists the young convalescent Richardis von Stade to illustrate the manuscript. As they develop a transformative collaboration that awakens them in ways both profound and unexpected, the two women must confront the powers that would see them erased from history rather than authoring it. At the same time, Hildegard is haunted by mysterious visions she cannot explain, forcing her to grapple with unacknowledged truths she can no longer deny.

Magnet Theatre's BOUNCED

Audiences of all ages will delight in this high-energy, playful theatrical production that delves into the dynamics between four friends experiencing deflated lows and the highest of highs. With physical play, singing, and bouncing balls galore, BOUNCED reveals the delicate balance of human interaction that can exist in groups of all sizes and kinds. This award-winning performance from the celebrated South African company Magnet Theatre is one not to be missed!

Meet the Irish

A Showcase of tour-ready contemporary Irish theatre and dance

Pastoral

Renowned choreographer Pam Tanowitz returns to Lincoln Center with Pastoral, an evocative evening-length dance performance in collaboration with composer Caroline Shaw and painter Sarah Crowner. Tanowitz set a dance to Beethoven’s beloved “Pastoral” symphony, then replaced it with a new score by Shaw that pays homage to, and transforms, the Beethoven work. Crowner’s awe-inspiring, abstract stage designs are as moving and lyrical as the choreography in this dazzling and critically acclaimed performance—a palimpsest of artistic layers, with Beethoven’s evocation of the natural world as a guiding spirit.

“Fresh and delightfully unpredictable… Pastoral was not a place I wanted to leave.” — The New York Times

Precipice

PRECIPICE sets an intimate story of a young woman’s struggle in the epic landscape of America’s mountain west. Like the land around her, her wild spirit is crushed by disregard. She escapes to the precipice and leaps, awakening mute in a wilderness in which she must fight to find her voice. The opera’s visual world is evoked by miniature dioramas and large-scale video. The score, inspired by American folk music, art song, and the sounds of nature, features seven singers, string quintet, piano and mandolin. By drawing parallels between environmental and emotional damage, PRECIPICE looks at how we are silenced and exiled, and how we find our way to connection, both with each other and the natural world.

TESTO

Wet Mess messifies transitions, testosterone and the edges of drag. Come and discover surreal spectacles, dykey desires and a choreography of guttural sexuality in a performance combining movement with pre-recorded interviews. Wet Mess pinches at the dull flesh of life where the magical is in the mundane and made-up sh*t becomes real. Wet Mess is a wet mess, horny for your confusion. Let it all out and guess again at the insecure balding white man, p*ssy prince, alien baby. Have a lollygag, think about your fantasy flesh suits, call me sweet prince, and remember Roger in a robe. Choose to make some silly campy decisions, with all the hairy thems and dykey men. Mainly thinking about cunnilingus but also being more unknown than known. All I really wanna do is strip for the stripper and drive her home with the dogs.

The All Sing Whale Road

The All Sing: Hwael-Rād (Whale-Road) is an ode to song and human-animal connection, uniting hundreds of voices in a vibrant tapestry of black metal blast beats and tender choral whalesong. From those who tread the boards of our most hallowed stages to those who love to belt in the shower, all are invited to join the choir for this world premiere choral work, and to raise their voices in a powerful communal experience, bridging the gap between humanity and those who dwell beneath the ocean’s depths.

Would you like to perform at the 2026 PROTOTYPE Festival? Join us as part of the choir for the world premiere of The All Sing: HWAEL-RĀD (Whale-Road) on January 11! Rehearsal materials will be distributed in mid-November.

The Rest of Our Lives from Under The Radar Theater Festival

Hopefully hopeful, The Rest of Our Lives is a joyful dose of dance, theatre, circus and games. A cabaret of life and near death. Two middle-aged lives in an eclectic, spontaneous, predictable and random decline. Jo is an old dancer, George an old clown. International artists with over 100 years of life experience between them, armed with a soundtrack of floor-fillers, a book of raffle tickets and a sprinkling of eco-friendly optimism. Joyful, celebratory and hilarious. The struggle is real. It's the beginning of the end. But we're still here.

Tiergarten

Death of Classical's immersive, subversive, underground cabaret event takes its name from the Tiergarten—“The Garden of Beasts”—a sprawling central park in Berlin around which the murderous leaders of the Third Reich rose to power. Directed by Andrew Ousley, the program traces a path backwards in time, exploring historic moments of societal madness through music ranging from Handel and Verdi to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Dean Martin to Max Richter, William Byrd to Brecht & Weill, with a panoply of performances that includes opera, classical, jazz, ballet, burlesque, and more.

What To Wear

For the first time in 20 years, What to wear — the comedic post-rock opera by composer Michael Gordon and the late downtown theater renegade icon Richard Foreman — returns to the stage in its New York Premiere. The production brings back to life Foreman’s original staging and production, with creative direction by Big Dance Theater co-founders Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, with Special Guest Performer St. Vincent!