New Dance Alliance’s Performance Mix Festival presents the work of over 20 artists annually in contexts ranging from traditional venues to site-specific installations to open-rehearsals to video screenings to artist talks. The Performance Mix Festival offers a wide range of avenues for audiences to engage in new explorations in dance, music, video and interdisciplinary performance by emerging and mid-career choreographers.
The first Performance Mix Festival (1986)* was groundbreaking in that it was the only festival at that time exclusively dedicated to performance art in lower Manhattan. Its continuing success is testimony to its vital necessity in New York’s cultural community. In 2021, NDA celebrated the 35th anniversary of the Performance Mix Festival. The New York arts community honored NDA’s Director Karen Bernard with a BAX10 Award for the founding and development of the Performance Mix Festival. The award acknowledges her distinct achievements, “providing emerging artists with the ingredients to continue to develop work and launch the next phase of their career, giving them the resources, exposure, and confidence they need to go forth with their individual goals.”
*The first Performance Mix Festival took place in 1986 at Henry Street Settlement and from 1988-2012 found a home at Dia Center for the Arts and Joyce SoHo. Since the closing of Joyce SoHo the Festival has been nomadic and has been presented at many venues in Lower Manhattan including University Settlement, Abrons Arts Center, Dixon Place, HERE and The Flea.
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K.J. Holmes, photo by Elyse Mertz
“Performance Mix Festival has its own life, and Karen and the staff continue to evolve with the times in a way I appreciate…it was tremendous to be a Liftoff AIR and then get to show the work I had continued to explore as an AIR a year later at PMF!”
New Dance Alliance
182 Duane Street
New York, NY 10013
(646) 510-1824
All venues are wheelchair accessible.
