“Soulful, imaginative, and rhythmically contagious” (The New York Times), Ragamala Dance Company presents Children of Dharma, the latest work by Bharatanatyam choreographers Aparna, Ranee, and Ashwini Ramaswamy. Their creative partnership as mother and daughters centers South Indian embodied rituals in the immigrant experience—upholding dance as a spiritual practice that can inspire, heal, and transform. Children of Dharma takes inspiration from Keerthik Sasidharan’s novel The Dharma Forest, a re-envisioning of the epic text, The Mahabharata.

"Richly expressive and irresistibly kinetic” (New York Times), Ronald K. Brown/EVIDENCE celebrates nearly 40 years of expertly melding traditional African and Afro-Cuban dance with contemporary choreography. Invoking themes of spirituality, community, and liberation, the company returns for its home season at The Joyce with a landmark restaging of Serving Nia (2001) as well as the 25th anniversary performance of Brown’s tour-de-force masterpiece, Grace (1999), interlaces stories of a Goddess’ visit to Earth and a collective journey to the promised land. In the company premiere of Serving Nia, the thematic sequel to Grace, Brown answers the call to serve a higher purpose than oneself through a rapturous blend of movement traditions from Senegal, Ivory Coast, and Guinea with modern dance forms.

With “technical strength, precision, and passion” (Arts Atlanta), the Havana-based Malpaso Dance Company returns for its tenth engagement at The Joyce. Since its founding in 2012 by Daile Carrazana, Osnel Delgado, and Fernando Sáez, the company remains committed to nurturing new voices in Cuban choreography. Its Joyce program of premiere commissions by local artists brings “stirring new ideas about movement, dance, and the intermingling of social and individual relationships” (CVNC), with live music by the Alma String Quartet.

Compagnie Hervé KOUBI performs What The Day Owes To The Night, a gravity-defying work blending capoeira, martial arts, and contemporary dance. Inspired by Algerian author Yasmina Khadra’s novel, What The Day Owes To The Night traces Koubi’s own personal lineage as a French-Algerian choreographer. After learning about his family’s Algerian roots, Koubi returned to the country of his ancestors to collaborate with streetdance performers from across the Mediterranean basin. What emerged is “a creation of poetic beauty” (The New York Times), a meditative yet strikingly athletic work about the ties that bind us.

Award-winning director and choreographer Camille A. Brown deepens her explorations of Black joy in the New York premiere of I AM. While Brown has often disrupted our understanding of the past, in this new work, she imagines a creative space for cultural liberation and launches queries into the possibilities of imagination that boldly investigate the future. Inspired by a narrative within the drama television series Lovecraft Country and the rhythms of the movie Drumline, I AM picks up where ink (2017) left off by blasting us into the universe where anything is possible through various dance and music genres of the African Diaspora. The work includes captivating, live, and original music by Deah Love Harriott, Juliette Jones, Jaylen Petinuad, and Martine Wade.

Acclaimed choreographer Akram Khan has developed a distinct voice as an advocate of cross-cultural encounters through his own lineage of classical Indian Kathak and contemporary dance. In his latest work, GIGENIS: The generation of the Earth, Khan shares the stage with a distinguished ensemble of classical Indian dance artists, including Kutiyattam artist Kapila Venu, Bharatanatyam soloists Mavin Khoo and Mythili Prakash, and the Bharatanatyam duo Vijna Vasudevan and Renjith Babu.