Celebrating Rising Talent at 25 to Watch Live 2026

On April 27, friends from across the dance community gathered in Harlem at The Apollo Stages at The Victoria for the fourth annual 25 to Watch Live. The springtime energy outside felt in keeping with the performance inside: a celebratory showcase for 11 of our 2026 “25 to Watch” picks. These talented artists’ careers are beginning to flower.

The night began with tap dancer Emiko Nakagawa’s Resonance, a tour de force solo with intricate footwork that left no musical beat unanswered. Two contemporary dancers also performed works of their own creation. Kris Lee’s Who dis fah credited its score to Mellowbastard (Lee’s music-making alter ego), but the audience never heard it: Lee walked onstage, set a timer on their watch, put in their earbuds, and proceeded to have a one-person silent disco, exploring a dramatic semi-private world as we watched in silence. Kashia Kancey, in a lime-green gown with a giant neck ruff, might have been an alien queen or a glam rocker or a high priestess—all of the above, probably—in her fantastical solo, For My Amusement.

Atlanta Ballet’s Ángel Ramírez was all sunny ebullience and laser-sharp cabrioles in a variation from Coppélia. On the other end of the ballet-hero spectrum, David O’Matz, of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, was the picture of elegant grief in Albrecht’s variation from Giselle. BalletMet’s Sumi Ichikawa made luxuriant use of her gorgeous port de bras in Leiland Charles’ Decisions, Decisions, which offered a contemporary twist on its Vivaldi score. Freelance dancer Deniz Erkan Sancak brought punk-rock energy to the ballet-inflected vocabulary of Stephen Petronio’s No More Heroes. And A.I.M by Kyle Abraham standout William Okajima lent poetic refinement to Ethan Colangelo’s Passing, a winding stream of a dance.

Contemporary choreographers Anthony and Kel Matsena presented a vivid excerpt from their Kabel, danced by Kel and Harvey Burke-Hamilton, which teetered on the border between connection and conflict. Mia J. Chong, now co-artistic director of ODC/Dance, showed an excerpt from Theories of Time, performed by a trio of ODC/Dance artists whose relationships to each other seemed to morph and fragment over the course of the work. To close out the evening, Agora Artists presented Willow DuBose’s All Rise, a patchwork of styles and moods that had its four dancers grooving to Minnie Riperton and gliding to Meredith Monk.

Each performance offered a compelling answer to—as Dance Magazine editor in chief Caitlin Sims said in her opening remarks—“the always-fascinating question of, ‘Where is dance heading next?’ ” Thank you to everyone who joined us for 25 to Watch Live and made the event possible, including sponsors Ballet Academy East, Bennington College, London Contemporary Dance School, and University of Southern California Glorya Kaufman School of Dance.