New Dance Alliance presents the 39th Annual Performance Mix Festival

June 5-8, 2025, at Abrons Arts Center’s Underground Theater

The 39th annual Performance Mix Festival brings together 40 innovative experimental performance, sound, and film artists over four days in June. The 2025 festival is curated by New Dance Alliance Artistic and Executive Director Karen Bernard, Managing Director Alexandra Doyle, and artist panelists Arantxa Araujo, Chloë Engel, Johanna Meyer, Jordan Deal, and Estrellx Supernova. In addition, films were selected in collaboration with Ciné-Corps.

Thursday, June 5 

Program B | 8:30pm: Elle Sofe Sara | Egbesola Efunyemi | jay beardsley | Jo Warren | Muyassar Kurdi 

Ciné-Corps film: Elle Sofe Sara / Giitu Giitu (Thank You Lord), 2019

Shot on location in Guovdageaidnu (Kautokeino), Finnmark, Norway, Thank You Lord takes us back to a time when lihkahusat, a state of Lestadian trance, occurred in Sápmi.

Egbesola Efunyemi 

Egbesola Efunyemi’s project intersects the mortal body with the Òrìṣà (Yoruba deity) of the human experience and creativity—Ọbàtálá. By ascertaining one’s spirit and alignment with Ọbàtálá, one goes on a magical late-night/early-morning club journey. The wooden floors unite humanity and creativity with ancestral magic and electronic beats.

jay beardsley / impossible task

Inspired by the written works of Sarah Ahmed, two dancers will investigate the strangeness of intimacy. The piece is built through the layering of an experimental movement score titled impossible task that was developed through work with AI.

Jo Warren / Neighbors

Neighbors is a dance for six people that tells non-linear stories about suburbia, the life and death of Jesus Christ, extraterrestrial communication, telepathy, love, and living at the end of the world.

Muyassar Kurdi

Through the sonic topographies of memory, the body recalls the rhythms of migration and the resonance of place. An immersive, embodied sound performance unfolds as an aural tapestry, woven from the threads of displacement and longing, where the body becomes a vessel for the stories that travel through time and geography.