City of Dance

City of Dance is the U.S. adaptation of La Ville Dansée, the landmark Paris Dance Project initiative imagined by Benjamin Millepied.

City of Dance is meant to bring society face to face with dance, on equal footing, in the streets of the city. The body carries history. The city carries history. To take dance out of the jewel box of the theater, a space some do not feel invited into or cannot afford to enter, is to let those histories meet. That is the political force of this work: dance as a way of telling us who we are, through stories embedded in the city itself, challenging our empathy and our understanding of one another.

Artistic Director’s Statement

“The film Koyaanisqatsi found me in the late nineties and never left. Its political force — its warning of a world out of balance — has stayed with me ever since. For years, I dreamed of commissioning a dance to Philip Glass’s extraordinary score. My dream is the event of this year’s City of Dance. I imagined five choreographers, each taking on a specific musical section of the film, coming together to create a single work — a work defined by the velocity of technology and the toll it exacts on nature, on society, on us. Koyaanisqatsi is as urgent today as the day it was made. Perhaps more so. It has been a thrill for all of us to come together and make this piece.”

— Benjamin Millepied

Choreographers: Dimitri Chamblas, Madeline Hollander, Jamar Roberts, Pam Tanowitz, and Benjamin Millepied.