Library for the Performing Arts Programs

*This tour requires no registration, and is first come, first served. Take a tour of the Joffrey Ballet exhibition with Libary staff to learn about the company's origins, and discover what makes the Joffrey a unique force in the world of dance. Robert Joffrey and his co-founder Gerald Arpino started a ballet company with a primary doctrine: that ballet was for everyone. Despite The Joffrey Ballet’s significant cultural impact, its story has received scant attention until now. In 2017, the Je…

Register Barbara A. Jones is the founder and executive director of The Harlem Swing Dance Society, the premiere Harlem nonprofit organization with the purpose of promoting, preserving and protecting the Lindy Hop dance and various forms of Swing Dance culture in its Harlem birthplace. The mission is to see the Harlem area once again embrace their signature cultural dance and energize community youth to be future innovators of this historic art form. While the Savoy Ballroom closed in 1958, a ne…

Register Robert Joffrey was a renowned and sought-after teacher who attracted students and dancers from very different backgrounds. His admirers included international ballet stars like Rudolf Nureyev, Margot Fonteyn, and Erik Bruhn, modern and postmodern icons such as Carmen de Lavallade and Yvonne Rainer, and young aspiring dancers —even Madonna, Patrick Swayze, Ann Reinking, and Charlize Theron. Joffrey was known for his logical, anatomically sound, eclectic approach, which differed from th…

Register Play Club is like a book club, but for plays! Whether you are familiar with the art of reading plays, or looking to expand your appreciation for dramatic literature, this book club is an opportunity to read plays you have been meaning to explore or have never considered reading before. Learn about new works, discover new playwrights, and make friends! This group will read one playscript from the Library for the Performing Arts circulating collection every month, and then come together…

Register Lou Reed was born March 2, 1942. The Lou Reed archive was acquired by the Library for the Performing Arts, and is accessible to all. Each year, we celebrate Reed’s birthday with a variety of events and programming. Photo Credit: Lou Reed holding a copy of Metal Machine Music at an in-store signing in Paris, September 19, 1996. © Mila Reynaud. Lou Reed Papers, Music and Recorded Sound Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. SEATING POLICY | Programs are free…

Register What if one of the greatest stories in American classical music was hiding in plain sight? Featuring long-forgotten treasures drawn from the archives of the Library for the Performing Arts—including works by Mary Howe and Helen Crane—cellist Juliana Soltis explores the lost legacy of some of these American women composers in a special performance with pianist Emile Blondel. Hear music by these women composers, and celebrate Women’s History Month at the Library for the Performing Ar…

Register The Silent Clowns Film Series is New York’s longest-running regularly scheduled silent film showcase. Our programming reaches the serious film buff by including rarely-screened titles and rare prints, yet it also introduces kids and new audiences to the classics of the silent screen. Screenings feature live piano accompaniment by MoMA’s Makia Matsumura, with an introduction and Q&A by film historians Matsumura and Steve Massa. Although Sydney Chaplin’s solo work has always been ov…

Register Since the 1930s, the 92nd Street Y has provided a home for modern dance—a space for experimentation, discussion, demonstration, and community interaction. Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, Charles Weidman, Hanya Holm, and Anna Sokolow were among the dance center’s founding faculty when it opened in 1935. Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, José Limón, Merce Cunningham, Pearl Lang, and many others developed important work here. In 1960, Alvin Ailey debuted his most famous work, Revelations, in…

Register Former New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay presents a selection of live film footage of the ballerina Suzanne Farrell in George Balanchine’s choreography, showing both her versatility and her unpredictability. He is joined by Robert Greskovic, dance critic of the Wall Street Journal. Photo Credit: Suzanne Farrell in Jewels. Photo by Martha Swope / © The New York Public Library. Jerome Robbins Dance Division. SEATING POLICY | Programs are free and open to all, but registr…

Register Based in NYC, Twelfth Night is an ensemble of historical performance specialists led by David Belkovski and Rachell Ellen Wong, formed with the firm belief that art is best explored as a meeting place of the past, present, and future. Inspired by Shakespeare’s play of the same name, the ensemble strives to invoke a spirit of boundless revelry, celebration, and community in their programming. The two co-founders are regarded as key young representatives of early music: Rachell is the…

Register The Crane Wife is a brand new musical about secrets, sacrifice, and sisterhood, created and made possible through the Library for the Performing Arts’ Across a Crowded Room Fellowship Program. Book by Keurim Hur Music by Maria Caputo Lyrics by A. J. Freeman Directed by Diane Phelan Starring Sienna Aczon, Diane Phelan, and Christopher Lau SEATING POLICY | Programs are free and open to all, but registration is requested. Check-in line forms 45 minutes before the advertised s…

Register Play Club is like a book club, but for plays! Whether you are familiar with the art of reading plays, or looking to expand your appreciation for dramatic literature, this book club is an opportunity to read plays you have been meaning to explore or have never considered reading before. Learn about new works, discover new playwrights, and make friends! This group will read one playscript from the Library for the Performing Arts circulating collection every month, and then come together…

Register This program, which dates back to 1972, features films in the Reserve Film and Video Collection around issues of public concern and notable topics. The monthly series aims to provide information on and stimulate conversation through the screening of new and historic works in RFVC and discussion with special guests. Photo Credit: Still from International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Directed by Greta Schiller and Andrea Weiss. SEATING POLICY | Programs are free and open to all, but regis…

Register Since 2014, the Library for the Performing Arts’ summer musical theater writing program has brought together lyricists, composers, bookwriters, and performers to form new collaborations and write 20-minute musicals with advice from experts in the industry. At the end of each program, the artists present their new musical theater works to the public. Join us for this special first performance of these works! Photo Credit: Liza Minnelli, John Kander, Fred Ebb rehearsing Flora the Red Me…

Register In this month’s Dance Historian Is In, Janice Ross, an interdisciplinary scholar who focuses on intersections between dance and cultural politics, traces the influence of homes and landscape architecture on choreography through the work of the California dancer Anna Halprin. Drawing on the methodology of her new book on Halprin and her husband, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, Ross explores rare footage from the Library for the Performing Arts archives linking Halprin’s inspirat…

Register Orchestra of St. Luke’s comes to perform for free at the Library for the Performing Arts, as part of their series of concerts in each of the five New York City boroughs. For this program, St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble performs music by Chen Yi, a celebrated Chinese-American composer whose work connects cultures and tells stories that resonate around the world. Born in China and thriving as an artist in the United States, Chen Yi combines the melodies of her heritage with a global perspe…

Register Play Club is like a book club, but for plays! Whether you are familiar with the art of reading plays, or looking to expand your appreciation for dramatic literature, this book club is an opportunity to read plays you have been meaning to explore or have never considered reading before. Learn about new works, discover new playwrights, and make friends! This group will read one playscript from the Library for the Performing Arts circulating collection every month, and then come together…

Register In honor of Women’s History Month, author and theater historian Jennifer Ashley Tepper will celebrate her newly released book with a presentation and performance. Women Writing Musicals: The Legacy that the History Books Left Out is the first-ever book about female musical theater writers. In this program, Tepper will give an inside look at some of the more than 300 inspiring women featured, including several writers whose work appears in New York Public Library collections. Expect b…

Register Mark Broomfield’s new book, Black Queer Dance, examines one of the most visible crucibles for masculinity—the male dancer—and illuminates the contradictory and conditional acceptance of Black gay men’s contributions to American modern dance. The book questions the politics of "coming out" and situates a new framework of "doing out" for understanding marginalized black LGBTQ people in the 20th and 21st century. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in New York City, Black Queer Dance features…

Register The Silent Clowns Film Series is New York’s longest-running regularly scheduled silent film showcase. Our programming reaches the serious film buff by including rarely-screened titles and rare prints, yet it also introduces kids and new audiences to the classics of the silent screen. Screenings feature live piano accompaniment by MoMA’s Ben Model, with an introduction and Q&A by film historians Model and Steve Massa. When Charlie Chaplin became famous as “The Little Tramp,” he was…

Register Bharatanatyam is one of the oldest classical Indian dance forms that originated in the temples of Tamil Nadu in South India over 2,000 years ago. In a class led by Bharatanatyam experts and practitioners, Aparna, Ranee, and Ashwini Ramaswamy, founders of the Ragamala Dance Company, introduce students to Alarmél Valli’s lineage of Bharatanatyam, focusing on the percussive, poetic, and expressive vocabularies that are the underpinnings of the form. The Ramaswamys discuss the concept of l…

Register The Library for the Performing Arts hosts a special screening of Breaking Form, a feature documentary about New York City-based choreographer Jane Comfort. A maverick of New York City’s downtown dance scene, Comfort is known for her issue-oriented works that integrate text and movement since the late 1970s. Directed by Peabody Award-winner Alexandra Nikolchev, Breaking Form delves into a creatively rich yet under-examined chapter in New York City dance, charting Comfort’s transformatio…

Register The Jerome Robbins Dance Division and the nonprofit dance history organization Our Steps welcome dance artists Jean Butler and Colin Dunne to revisit their iconic Irish dance production Dancing on Dangerous Ground which had its premiere 25 years ago in London’s Drury Lane and went on to a sell-out run in New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Described in the New York Times as “channeling Irish dance into genuine artistic expression,” Dancing on Dangerous Ground achieved cult status amongst…

Register There may be no ballet teacher with as deep and wide an influence as Stanley Williams, whose legendary work had an extraordinary impact on his students and the ballet community as a whole. Hired by George Balanchine for the School of American Ballet in 1964, he turned out generations of students who worshiped his quiet, enigmatic teaching style. Revered and renowned internationally, he was also beloved, and his students became his acolytes. Three former New York City Ballet principal…