The inaugural Lincoln Center Contemporary Dance Festival arrives this summer, placing contemporary dance at the center of one of New York's largest cultural platforms. The multi-week festival will present indoor and outdoor performances, workshops and more across Lincoln Center Plaza. After the summer program, the festival will return in January, establishing a twice-yearly cadence.

The festival is the headline event of the new Pasculano Collaborative for Contemporary Dance, an initiative funded by a large gift from philanthropists Lynne and Richard Pasculano. Pasculano Collaborative director Donald Borror, Lincoln Center director of contemporary programs Meiyin Wang, and guest curator Kyle Abraham built a lineup of productions diverse in origin and approach.

The program includes Yinka Esi Graves' The Disappearing Act, which excavates the history of flamenco and its African influences; Jeremy Nedd's from rock to rock…aka how magnolia was taken for granite, an inquiry into communal joy through Milly Rock; Sung Im Her | Her Project's 1 Degree Celsius, an exploration of the human body's relationships to the natural and urban world; Rachid Ouramdane's TORDRE, a journey through identity and personal expression; and Akram Khan's Thikra: Night of Remembering, presented as part of the final tour of Khan's company.

Curation, Borror says, begins with an open question. "When we think about the role of curation in all of this, the guiding light that we have is asking the question 'What is contemporary dance?'" Borror says. "[We're using] the festival as a current snapshot of what asking that question looks like, knowing that the answer will always be different and is definitely not definitive."

Shanta Thake, chief artistic officer at Lincoln Center, argues the festival addresses a gap in access. "Lincoln Center is such a big platform," she says. "I think the [contemporary] dance community deserves and hasn't had much access to [it]."

The Pasculano Collaborative is also planning beyond the festival itself. "We are working on several commissions and hopefully a robust pipeline of commissions through the lifecycle of the work that we're doing," Borror says. That work includes support for local, national and international artists and expanding the contemporary-dance canon.

Early-career artists will have a dedicated role. The festival features a professional-development cohort offering emerging artists the chance to "lift the hood of the car and see what's underneath," Borror says, "and have generative, constructive conversations with other early-career professionals about what it is that the field is facing right now."

Collaboration anchors the initiative. This summer's partnerships include an exhibition chronicling the history of contemporary dance, created with the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and displayed in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall. Borror emphasizes the festival will complement existing programming at Lincoln Center rather than duplicate it.

Accessibility shapes the ticketing strategy. "We've changed our entire ticketing model at Lincoln Center over the last few years to be free and choose what you pay," Thake says. Thake and Borror hope the model converts first-time attendees into lifelong supporters of contemporary dance.

Both leaders frame the festival as a civic act as much as an artistic one. "Post-pandemic, dance is critical to how we can come together," Thake says. "[It's] a way that we can literally connect to one another, literally notice each other's bodies and celebrate."

With a twice-yearly schedule, a commissioning pipeline and free-and-choose-what-you-pay access, the festival positions the Pasculano Collaborative to shape contemporary dance in New York well beyond a single summer.