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 C | 3pm: Raphael Chatelain & Nicolas Huchard | Ja’Moon and The Dancing Spirit | Nubian Néné/A Lady in the House Dance Company 

Ciné-Corps film: Raphael Chatelain & Nicolas Huchard, Tajabone, 2021

“This is what freedom feels like, baby.” The uncompromising words of musician and writer Mykki Blanco echo over a transcendental parade of a group of empowered queer dancers. A film about the French Black queer community taking pride in who they are, what they have achieved, and embracing the bodies they are in. Tajabone takes its name from a unique tradition in Senegal, where in addition to singing and dancing through the streets, everyone practices cross-dressing through the night.

Ja’Moon and The Dancing Spirit / The Ghetto Shaman: That Which Lurks in the Shadows

The Ghetto Shaman: That Which Lurks in the Shadows is a visceral dance-theater work that delves into the mental and emotional landscape of the radical and wayward spirit. It explores themes of fragmentation, conjure, trance, and exhaustion as they manifest in the reckoning with social and political shadows.

Nubian Néné/A Lady in the House Dance Company

About their work, Nubian Néné writes: “There is a curiosity to bring different Black bodies to express what Waacking is to us, and what it looks like 40 years after its inception. What is the Queer, Black, American evolution of this movement? How does this dance form help us combat today’s challenges as Black Queer Bodies?  How can we reclaim its power, and have it celebrated on American soil?  With this work, there is a desire to highlight who the Black bodies, the Queer Black bodies are, and how we are using this dance form to express, activate, and empower. There is an opportunity to elevate teens and adults alike through this movement that can inspire to break prejudice, queerphobia, racism, and much more.”