Library for the Performing Arts Programs

Register The Crane Wife is a brand new musical about secrets, sacrifice, and sisterhood, created and made possible through the Library for the Performing Arts’ Across a Crowded Room Fellowship Program. Book by Keurim Hur Music by Maria Caputo Lyrics by A. J. Freeman Directed by Diane Phelan Starring Sienna Aczon, Diane Phelan, and Christopher Lau SEATING POLICY | Programs are free and open to all, but registration is requested. Check-in line forms 45 minutes before the advertised s…

Register Play Club is like a book club, but for plays! Whether you are familiar with the art of reading plays, or looking to expand your appreciation for dramatic literature, this book club is an opportunity to read plays you have been meaning to explore or have never considered reading before. Learn about new works, discover new playwrights, and make friends! This group will read one playscript from the Library for the Performing Arts circulating collection every month, and then come together…

Register This month's program celebrates the women in history who made a difference, in big and small ways. Legacy 16mm films by independent filmmakers will highlight important figures, from LaDonna Harris to Shirley Chisholm. The screening will be followed by an audience discussion with Elena Rossi-Snook, the program's curator! This program, which dates back to 1972, features films in the Reserve Film and Video Collection around issues of public concern and notable topics. The monthly series…

Register Since 2014, the Library for the Performing Arts’ summer musical theater writing program has brought together lyricists, composers, bookwriters, and performers to form new collaborations and write 20-minute musicals with advice from experts in the industry. At the end of each program, the artists present their new musical theater works to the public. Join us for this special first performance of these works! Photo Credit: Liza Minnelli, John Kander, Fred Ebb rehearsing Flora the Red Me…

Register In this month’s Dance Historian Is In, Janice Ross, an interdisciplinary scholar who focuses on intersections between dance and cultural politics, traces the influence of homes and landscape architecture on choreography through the work of the California dancer Anna Halprin. Drawing on the methodology of her new book on Halprin and her husband, landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, Ross explores rare footage from the Library for the Performing Arts archives linking Halprin’s inspirat…

Register Orchestra of St. Luke’s comes to perform for free at the Library for the Performing Arts, as part of their series of concerts in each of the five New York City boroughs. For this program, St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble performs music by Chen Yi, a celebrated Chinese-American composer whose work connects cultures and tells stories that resonate around the world. Born in China and thriving as an artist in the United States, Chen Yi combines the melodies of her heritage with a global perspe…

Register Play Club is like a book club, but for plays! Whether you are familiar with the art of reading plays, or looking to expand your appreciation for dramatic literature, this book club is an opportunity to read plays you have been meaning to explore or have never considered reading before. Learn about new works, discover new playwrights, and make friends! This group will read one playscript from the Library for the Performing Arts circulating collection every month, and then come together…

Register In honor of Women’s History Month, author and theater historian Jennifer Ashley Tepper will celebrate her newly released book with a presentation and performance from Badia Farha (Hell's Kitchen) and Alyse Alan Louis (TEETH), with Ruiran Xun (The Jonathan Larson Project) on the keys. Women Writing Musicals: The Legacy that the History Books Left Out is the first-ever book about female musical theater writers. In this program, Tepper will give an inside look at some of the more than 300…

Register Mark Broomfield’s new book, Black Queer Dance, examines one of the most visible crucibles for masculinity—the male dancer—and illuminates the contradictory and conditional acceptance of Black gay men’s contributions to American modern dance. The book questions the politics of "coming out" and situates a new framework of "doing out" for understanding marginalized black LGBTQ people in the 20th and 21st century. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in New York City, Black Queer Dance features…

Register The Library for the Performing Arts hosts a special screening of You Can't Erase Me: Sparky D Secrets, a documentary chronicling the life and legacy of legendary battle rapper MC Sparky D. From her iconic hip-hop rivalries to her struggles with addiction and homelessness, the film captures Sparky D’s triumphant journey of resilience and redemption. Following the screening, Sparky D and producer/director Tony “Mr. Wave” Wesley will engage in a thought-provoking panel discussion, offer…

Register The Silent Clowns Film Series is New York’s longest-running regularly scheduled silent film showcase. Our programming reaches the serious film buff by including rarely-screened titles and rare prints, yet it also introduces kids and new audiences to the classics of the silent screen. Screenings feature live piano accompaniment by MoMA’s Ben Model, with an introduction and Q&A by film historians Model and Steve Massa. When Charlie Chaplin became famous as “The Little Tramp,” he was…

Register Bharatanatyam is one of the oldest classical Indian dance forms that originated in the temples of Tamil Nadu in South India over 2,000 years ago. In a class led by Bharatanatyam experts and practitioners, Aparna, Ranee, and Ashwini Ramaswamy, founders of the Ragamala Dance Company, introduce students to Alarmél Valli’s lineage of Bharatanatyam, focusing on the percussive, poetic, and expressive vocabularies that are the underpinnings of the form. The Ramaswamys discuss the concept of l…

Register The Library for the Performing Arts hosts a special screening of Breaking Form, a feature documentary about New York City-based choreographer Jane Comfort. A maverick of New York City’s downtown dance scene, Comfort is known for her issue-oriented works that integrate text and movement since the late 1970s. Directed by Peabody Award-winner Alexandra Nikolchev, Breaking Form delves into a creatively rich yet under-examined chapter in New York City dance, charting Comfort’s transformatio…

Register The Jerome Robbins Dance Division and the nonprofit dance history organization Our Steps welcome dance artists Jean Butler and Colin Dunne to revisit their iconic Irish dance production Dancing on Dangerous Ground which had its premiere 25 years ago in London’s Drury Lane and went on to a sell-out run in New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Described in the New York Times as “channeling Irish dance into genuine artistic expression,” Dancing on Dangerous Ground achieved cult status amongst…

Register There may be no ballet teacher with as deep and wide an influence as Stanley Williams, whose legendary work had an extraordinary impact on his students and the ballet community as a whole. Hired by George Balanchine for the School of American Ballet in 1964, he turned out generations of students who worshiped his quiet, enigmatic teaching style. Revered and renowned internationally, he was also beloved, and his students became his acolytes. Three former New York City Ballet principal…

Register New York City’s Dancemobile was a groundbreaking project in African American dance, created by Carole Y. Johnson and produced by the Harlem Cultural Council. For over two decades, between 1967 and 1989, this flatbed- truck-turned-stage traversed the city’s five boroughs, bringing free performances by Black choreographers to streets, parks, and community spaces. Reaching more than 1 million New Yorkers, Dancemobile showcased the work of choreographers Eleo Pomare, Rod Rodgers, Louis Joh…

Register The culmination of an intense semester of research and creative experimentation, New School students, led by acclaimed saxophonist and composer Jane Ira Bloom, present new music and theater works inspired by and incorporating the Library’s archives. Photo Credit: Rebecca Littman SEATING POLICY | Programs are free and open to all, but registration is requested. Check-in line forms 45 minutes before the advertised start time. Registered guests are given priority check-in 15 to 30 mi…

Register For more than a decade, the Across a Crowded Room incubator program series at the Library for the Performing Arts has created a space for musical theater artists to meet, collaborate, and form connections. Since 2022, the Library for the Performing Arts has allowed program participants to apply for an Across a Crowded Room fellowship, which gives the artists money to develop their 20-minute musical works into 90-minute pieces. Please join us for the first public presentation of one su…

Register For more than a decade, the Across a Crowded Room incubator program series at the Library for the Performing Arts has created a space for musical theater artists to meet, collaborate, and form connections. Since 2022, the Library for the Performing Arts has allowed program participants to apply for an Across a Crowded Room fellowship, which gives the artists money to develop their 20-minute musical works into 90-minute pieces. Please join us for the first public presentation of one suc…