During the fall 2024 Works & Process season, a full slate of dynamic events will take place at the Guggenheim Museum, Manhattan West, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Highlights include two new commissions which will preview and premiere in the Guggenheim’s Peter B. Lewis Theater. Works & Process will also collaborate on two Guggenheim Member Mondays in the Guggenheim rotunda, presenting the Ladies of Hip-Hop, calling for all to jump into the circle and dance, plus an interactive lesson from NYCity Tango Collective. A detailed schedule of events follows.

The Works & Process season begins with Gather Round, a free outdoor series organized with Brookfield Properties Arts & Culture that will take place at Manhattan West Plaza event circle. Inspired by the competitions of the summer Olympics in Paris and the debut of breakdancing as an Olympic sport, Works & Process will feature a celebration of street and club dance battles every Wednesday in September. See breakdancers compete in an event by Kwikstep and Rokafella in Behind The Groove, admire as members of the ballroom dance community walk categories in the Gather Round Kiki Ball, watch the Fabulous Waacking Festival Fall Edition with Princess Lockerooo, and witness a beatbox battle with The Beatbox House. This series exemplifies Works & Process’s sustained commitment to street and social dance, previously presented in the Guggenheim rotunda.

Championing the creative process at each step, from studio to stage, Works & Process amplifies support for performing artists while providing the public behind-the-scenes access to new works, with programs that blend performance and artist discussions to foster greater understanding and appreciation. Works & Process is a non-profit performing arts organization without walls. Through collaborations and partnerships, Works & Process aggregates resources to support longitudinal creative process. In a philosophy akin to farm-to-table, Works & Process LaunchPAD “Process as Destination” offers artists fully funded creative residencies with fourteen partners spanning Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York. This fall the Guggenheim Museum, Manhattan West with Brookfield Properties Arts & Culture, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, will host events produced by Works & Process. Works & Process’s impact will be felt further afield as numerous commissions created in LaunchPAD residencies tour nationally and internationally.

After three successful years, LaunchPAD residencies continues to provide longitudinal and made-to-measure support for artists, including industry-leading creative residency fees of $1,050 per artist per week, transportation, health insurance enrollment access, 24/7 studio availability, and on-site housing. Recognizing that the artistic process is a continuum, public engagements during the residency illuminate the creative process with local communities. Culminating performances in New York City provide artists $400 per artist per performance.

General ticketing starts July 25 at worksandprocess.org.

All programs offer tickets starting at $15 or free ticketing options.

SEASON AT A GLANCE

Works & Process Commissions

• Commission Preview: Music From The Sole – Sept 30
• To the Body by Nico Muhly, in partnership with Guggenheim Asian Art Initiative – Nov 10
• Third Bird by Isaac Mizrahi and Nico Muhly, with Dance Heginbotham and Ensemble Connect conducted by Michael P. Atkinson – Dec 14

Productions

• Peter & the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev with Isaac Mizrahi, Dance Heginbotham, and Ensemble Connect conducted by Michael P. Atkinson – Dec 6, 7, and 8
• Rotunda Holiday Concert: Charles Turner & Uptown Swing with Jasmine Rice LaBeija – Dec 15

Highlights and Discussions

• The Metropolitan Opera: Grounded by Jeanine Tesori, libretto by George Brant – Sept 9
• Opera Philadelphia and Lyric Opera of Chicago: The Listeners by Missy Mazzoli, libretto by Royce Vavrek – Sept 15
• American Ballet Theatre: Crime and Punishment by Helen Pickett – Sept 22
• Documentary Preview and Discussion: No Dancing Allowed with LaTasha Barnes, Sekou Heru, Aidan Gibney, Jared Harbour, and Ellen Ling – Sept 23
• Martha Graham Dance Company: Baye & Asa – Sept 29
• New York City Ballet: Caili Quan, Tiler Peck, and Gianna Reisen – Oct 6
• School of American Ballet at 90 – Oct 7
• Tango Essence with Pedro Giraudo’s Tango Quartet – Nov 18

Rotunda Dance Parties with Guggenheim Member Mondays

• Ladies of Hip-Hop – Sept 23
• NYCity Tango Collective, in conjunction with the exhibition Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930 – Nov 18

Works & Process Commissions on Tour

• Music From The Sole’s I Didn’t Come to Stay
• The Big Show with Princess Lockerooo & The Fabulous Waack Dancers
• The Missing Element featuring The Beatbox House
• LayeRhythm
• LaTasha Barnes’s The Jazz Continuum
• Ephrat Asherie Dance’s UNDERSCORED
• Ladies of Hip-Hop: Black Dancing Bodies Project: “SpeakMyMind”

Works & Process at the Guggenheim

1071 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10128

Tickets starting at $15

The Metropolitan Opera

Grounded by Jeanine Tesori, libretto by George Brant

Monday, September 9, 7 pm

See highlights from two-time Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s newest opera, Grounded, with a libretto by George Brant, author of the original play. Wrestling with the ethical quandaries and psychological toll of twenty-first-century warfare, this Met commission focuses on Jess, a hotshot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a reaper drone halfway around the world. As she struggles to adjust to this new way of doing battle, she fights to maintain her sanity, and her soul, as she is called to rain down death by remote control. Met General Manager Peter Gelb moderates a discussion with the creative team, and members of the cast perform selections from the opera.

Opera Philadelphia and Lyric Opera of Chicago

The Listeners by Missy Mazzoli, libretto by Royce Vavrek

Sunday, September 15, 7 pm

Composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek follow their hit opera Breaking the Waves with a thriller about the seductive power of cults and charismatic leaders in a divided nation. Co-commissioned and co-produced with Opera Philadelphia, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Norwegian National Opera, The Listeners examines the lengths to which we, as Americans, are willing to go to find a sense of place and purpose, and the way in which confident, charming leaders can exploit these needs to their own ends. Prior to the American premiere at Opera Philadelphia in September 2024 and Lyric Opera of Chicago in March 2025, members of the creative team will discuss their creative process, and excerpts will be performed.

American Ballet Theatre

Crime and Punishment by Helen Pickett

Sunday, September 22, 3 and 7 pm

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment is a devastatingly modern psychological thriller that provided choreographer Helen Pickett and director James Bonas with a startling source for a ballet. Pickett brings the work to life in a striking new ballet, featuring music by Isobel Waller-Bridge, sets and costumes by Soutra Gilmour, lighting design by Jennifer Tipton, and video design by Tal Yarden. Before the premiere, American Ballet Theatre Artistic Director Susan Jaffe moderates a discussion with members of the cast and creative team, and excerpts are performed.

Documentary Preview and Discussion

No Dancing Allowed

with LaTasha Barnes, Sekou Heru, Aidan Gibney, Jared Harbour, and Ellen Ling

Monday, September 23, 7 pm

Don’t miss this first look of No Dancing Allowed by Earthbound Studio, a documentary co-executive produced by Works & Process, investigating the intersection of Street Dance culture and governmental policies in New York City. Whether it was Lindy Hop in the 1920s or House in the 1980s, Street Dance has remained a ritual for Black communities despite its threatened survival. By diving into New York City’s past and present, this film unveils the turbulent evolution of Street Dance into the cultural behemoth it is today. Through interviews with practitioners, clubheads, and policymakers, learn firsthand of the club era at its height and the destruction that the New York City government set in motion. No Dancing Allowed is a story of ingenuity, culture, erasure, and, most of all, resilience. See a preview of the documentary, and members of the creative team, including LaTasha Barnes, Sekou Heru, Aidan Gibney, Jared Harbour, and Ellen Ling, will participate in a moderated discussion. 

After the documentary preview, head to the rotunda for a dance party and join the cipher with the Ladies of Hip-Hop in conjunction with the Guggenheim’s Member Mondays and presented by Works & Process.

Rotunda Dance Party

Ladies of Hip-Hop

Monday, September 23, 8 pm

Jump into the cypher with the Ladies of Hip-Hop (LOHH), an all-female intergenerational dance collective that creates dance works illuminating the strength, power, and diversity of women in hip-hop. LOHH interweaves the embodied experiences of women, creating a communal fabric that paints a picture of a more global women experience. In conjunction with the Guggenheim’s Member Mondays and presented by Works & Process, the evening will be hosted by MC and LOHH member Alora Tonielle, and the Ladies of Hip-Hop will bring the party to the Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda!

Martha Graham Dance Company

Baye & Asa

Sunday, September 29, 7 pm

See highlights from a Martha Graham Dance Company commissioned expansion of choreographers Baye & Asa’s Cortege 2023. Inspired by Martha Graham’s Cortege of Eagles, in which the ferryman for the underworld, Charon, foreshadows the fall of Troy, Baye & Asa’s work asks, “Who is the ferryman for the fall of the American Empire?” This evening culminates a weeklong Works & Process LaunchPAD residency at the Catskill Mountain Foundation, and Baye and Asa will participate in a moderated discussion with artistic director Janet Eilber. Martha Graham Dance Company members will perform excerpts prior to the work’s premiere.

W&P Commission Preview

Music From The Sole

Monday, September 30, 7 pm

Blurring the line between concert, dance, and music performance, Music From The Sole is a tap dance and live music company that celebrates tap’s roots in the African diaspora. Led by Brazilian tap dancer and choreographer Leonardo Sandoval and composer and bassist Gregory Richardson, Music From The Sole draws from Afro-Brazilian, jazz, soul, house, rock, and Afro-Cuban styles. See a preview of a new Works & Process commission that culminates a weeklong Works & Process LaunchPAD residency at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park.

Commissioned by Works & Process, this work has been developed in a Works & Process LaunchPAD residency at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park (2024) and an upcoming residency in January 2025 at Guild Hall William P. Rayner Artist-in-Residence.

This new work is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Works & Process, the Joyce Theater Foundation, The Yard, Guild Hall, Dance Place, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, and NPN. More information: npnweb.org. Additional support was provided by the Harkness Dance Foundation, a 2023 Alan M. Kriegsman Creative Residency at Dance Place, and as 2023 William P. Rayner Artist-in-Residence at Guild Hall.

New York City Ballet

Caili Quan, Tiler Peck, and Gianna Reisen

Sunday, October 6, 7 pm

Go behind the scenes of the three ballets comprising New York City Ballet’s 2024 Fall Fashion Gala performance. See highlights from Caili Quan’s first work for the company set to music by Camille Saint-Saëns, which will premiere at the gala on Wednesday, October 9. Explore Gianna Reisen’s 2022 commission for the School of American Ballet, Signs, set to music by Philip Glass. Longtime principal dancer Tiler Peck, known for her astute sense of musicality, discusses her hit ballet from the 2024 winter season and first New York City Ballet commission, Concerto for Two Pianos, set to music by Francis Poulenc. Company members perform excerpts.

School of American Ballet at 90

Monday, October 7, 7 pm

On January 2, 1934, George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein opened the doors of the School of American Ballet (SAB) on Madison Avenue in New York City. Celebrate SAB’s 90th anniversary and the impact the school has had on ballet in America.

W&P Commission

To the Body by Nico Muhly

Sunday, November 10, 7 pm

In partnership with Guggenheim Asian Art Initiative

To the Body is an immersive soundscape created for the exhibition Yu Hong: Another One Bites the Dust, on view concurrently with the 60th Venice Biennale. It is a work in ten sections, played without pause and repeated without seam, in which fragments of Dietrich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri (1680) appear, but are themselves disembodied from their original context. A soprano sings a line drawn from the original cantata over a bed of electronically manipulated sounds, Renaissance and Baroque instruments, and other voices. The primary musical and emotional elements are memory, contortion, and recontextualization; these act hand in hand with Yu Hong’s work, as well as in counterpoint to them.

To the Body was commissioned by Works & Process with support from the American Academy in Rome and the Guggenheim’s Asian Art Circle.

Yu Hong: Another One Bites the Dust is organized by Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator at Large, Global Arts, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and is a program of the Guggenheim Museum’s Asian Art Initiative that is supported by the museum’s Asian Art Circle.

Tango Essence with Pedro Giraudo’s Tango Quartet

Monday, November 18, 7 pm

Experience the soul of tango in an evening created by Mariana Parma with tango dancer Leonardo Sardella, Latin Grammy-award-winner Pedro Giraudo and his Tango Quartet featuring singer Sofia Tosello. Presented by Works & Process in conjunction with the Guggenheim Museum exhibition Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930, see the connection between works by Orphist artists, including Sonia Delaunay, and the circular forms, spirals, arching patterns and constellations of paired bodies moving with the synthesis and electric tension emblematic of tango. A social dance, tango enables people of different ages, cultures, and backgrounds to meet in an “embrace.” Originated in the 1880s along the Rio de la Plata between Argentina and Uruguay, the tango quickly spread to the rest of the world, including Paris, and intertwining with the artists of the Orphist movement. View the exhibition, see a one night only performance in the theater, and join in an interactive dance lesson and social dance for all in the rotunda.

In conjunction with Member Mondays.

Rotunda Dance Party

NYCity Tango Collective

Monday, November 18, 8 pm

Come dance in the rotunda with the NYCity Tango Collective! This group of professional dancers from Argentina and Uruguay with more than 25 years of experience aims to spread tango throughout NYC. In conjunction with the Guggenheim’s Member Mondays and with the Guggenheim’s exhibition Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910–1930, Works & Process opens the Guggenheim rotunda to NYCity Tango for a tango dance class taught by the collective and followed by a social dance party.

Peter & the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev with Isaac Mizrahi

Dance Heginbotham with Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect conducted by Michael P. Atkinson

Friday, December 6, 6:30 pm

Saturday, December 7, 11 am, 1, and 2:30 pm

Sunday, December 8, 1, 2:30, and 4 pm

Isaac Mizrahi narrates and directs Sergei Prokofiev’s charming children’s classic, Peter & the Wolf, accompanied by Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, conducted by Michael P. Atkinson. The cast, wearing costumes by Mizrahi, performs choreography by John Heginbotham, bringing the thirty-minute story to life for the young and young at heart.

No matter how tall or small, everyone needs a ticket.

W&P Commission

Third Bird by Isaac Mizrahi and Nico Muhly

Dance Heginbotham with Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect conducted by Michael P. Atkinson

Saturday, December 14, 2:30 and 4 pm

Since 2007, Works & Process has produced sold-out performances of Sergei Prokofiev’s charming children’s classic Peter & the Wolf, directed and narrated by Isaac Mizrahi. After over one hundred performances, Mizrahi was inspired to create an homage to this iconic work, and during the COVID-19 pandemic Works & Process commissioned Third Bird. Highlighting a cast of eight—including a flying bluebird, a swimming duck, and a running ostrich—danced by Dance Heginbotham, accompanied by Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, and conducted by Michael P. Atkinson, Third Bird celebrates each individual’s unique strengths.

No matter how tall or small, everyone needs a ticket.

Commissioned by Works & Process, Third Bird was developed in a Works & Process bubble residency at Catskill Mountain Foundation in spring 2021 with the support from the Mellon Foundation and Doris Duke Foundation. Third Bird also received a Works & Process LaunchPAD residency in winter 2021 at The Church in Sag Harbor, New York.

Rotunda Holiday Concert

Charles Turner & Uptown Swing with Jasmine Rice LaBeija

Sunday, December 15, 7 pm

Celebrate the season with festive music rooted in the tradition of jazz, swing, and the blues. For this evening, Charles Turner & Uptown Swing, along with Asian drag artist and Juilliard-trained tenor Jasmine Rice LaBeija, will fill the museum’s iconic Frank Lloyd Wright–designed rotunda with the joyous sound of holiday music as part of a beloved annual tradition.

Works & Process at Manhattan West with Brookfield Properties Arts & Culture

Manhattan West Event Plaza, 385 9th Ave, New York, NY 10001

Free, RSVP encouraged

Gather Round: Street and Club Dance Battles

Wednesdays in September

Behind The Groove: CeleBreak Outside! with Kwikstep and Rokafella

Wednesday, September 4, 4:30 pm

Gather Round Kiki Ball

Wednesday, September 11, 4:30 pm

Fabulous Waacking Festival Fall Edition with Princess Lockerooo

Wednesday, September 18, 4:30 pm

Manhattan West Beatbox Battle with The Beatbox House

Wednesday, September 25, 4:30 pm

Works & Process at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Jerome Robbins Dance Division

40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023

Free, RSVP required

West African Dance to AfrikFusion

Intergenerational Stories with Marie Basse-Wiles & Omari Wiles

Thursday, November 14, 6 pm

In this event, decades of tradition, creation, preservation, innovation, and transference of knowledge are on view with West African dance cultural icon Marie Basse-Wiles and her son Ballroom Legend Omari Wiles. A principal with the National Ballet of Senegal from 1973 to 1980, Wiles, after immigrating to America in 1982 founded the Maimouna Keita School of African Dance (MKSAD) in Brooklyn. 

For 32 years MKSAD has brought together the African diaspora in an annual conference and Basse-Wiles has trained generations of renown artists whose impact continues to resonate the world over, including tours to Senegal, Mali, Gambia, and Guinea. Her son Omari Wiles has followed in her footsteps while walking to the beat of his own drum, founding his own company Les Ballet Afrik (LBA) and creating AfrikFusion informed by Ball Culture, Vogue, and West African dance. Commissioned by Works & Process to collaborate on a new intergenerational work, Djapo, that brings together MKSAD and LBA and mother and son, we present the start of this new work that is the continuation of a rich dance history.