Next Wave 2026 brings bold productions from artists who have presented work at BAM for decades, alongside thrilling creations by artists whose work comes to our stages for the first time. Working in dance, music, poetry, theater, film, movement, memoir, puppetry, and opera, they all create original, individual, and uncompromising art. What they share in common is an emphasis on time: how history is made, how legacy is formed, and how the past informs and shapes the present and future.
We are thrilled to welcome back playwright and director Tiago Rodrigues, a BAM favorite for provocative works like By Heart and Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, returns with La Distance, a poignant drama introduced at the 2025 Avignon Festival. Einstein on the Beach—50th Anniversary Concert commemorates the revolutionary 1976 opera by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, whose historic collaboration began with a chance meeting at BAM. And you won’t want to miss Minor Music at the End of the World, an extraordinary multidisciplinary collaboration fusing multiple modes of live performance and film.
This year’s Next Wave also lays groundwork for a BAM milestone yet to come: the 50th anniversary of DanceAfrica, the nation’s largest celebration of African diasporic dance and music, arriving in May 2027. By providing a platform where African artists like Dorothée Munyaneza and Dorcy Rugamba, both from Rwanda, as well as New Yorkers Nehprii Amenii and Okwui Okpokwasili can create work that deals with historical legacy and Afro-futurist possibility, we honor the vital legacy that choreographer and DanceAfrica founder Chuck Davis bequeathed to BAM.
