Neil Greenberg Returns With 'Next Dance' After His Husband's Death

Neil Greenberg opens "Next Dance" at the Chocolate Factory Theater in Queens on Nov. 12. The premiere arrives nine months after the death of his husband, the artist Frank Mullaney, and two months after Greenberg made the decision to postpone it.

Greenberg, 67, began rehearsals in July 2025. After a month of work, he faced a choice: push the premiere forward or delay it. Mullaney had just been diagnosed with lung cancer. Greenberg knew the answer — and he postponed. Mullaney died in February. The two had been together for 29 years, nearly half of Greenberg's life.

What is Greenberg's history with loss?

Greenberg has built a four-decade career in New York's downtown dance scene as a choreographer of exacting craft. Loss has shaped that career before. His best-known work, "Not-About-AIDS-Dance," premiered in 1994 at the height of the AIDS crisis. It responded to the many deaths around him, including that of his brother. The piece used subtitles to reveal facts about the lives of Greenberg's performers and himself — among them that he was H.I.V. positive.

Its most chilling image accompanied text that read, "This is what my brother Jon looked like in his coma." Greenberg, standing, moved a finger through the air as his eyes rolled back. It knocked the breath out of you, observers recall. Greenberg says it remains the only time he has done "something truly kind of literal."

Is 'Next Dance' about Mullaney's death?

Greenberg is firm that it is not. "This is not that, this is. …" he said, pausing. "I don't even know how to finish that sentence. The dance is not about Frank dying. This is me following the movement and making my next dance in relationship to my previous dances."

The work itself holds both registers. There are sudden somber moments: bodies roll and wind on the floor, or drift in slow repose. There are brighter bursts too, eccentric and sensual, as dancers swivel their hips at angles that turn their twisting torsos into what one observer describes as iridescent sculptures.

The takeaway in plain words: "Next Dance" continues a body of work rather than mourning a single loss. For a choreographer whose 1994 landmark turned subtitles into confessions, the new piece stakes its claim in movement alone — and its Nov. 12 opening will show whether that restraint carries the same force.