DANCE NOW Boston 2026 brings the funny and poignant
This year’s edition of DANCE NOW Boston – the annual show co-produced and presented by The Dance Complex in Cambridge and New York City-based contemporary dance company The Bang Group – runs June 6 and 7 at the Complex. Curated by Bang Group co-founding artists David Parker and Jeffrey Kazin, who both have strong Boston roots, the program features a mix of long-time collaborators and new partnerships.
Works by Parker and Kazin anchor the evening. Their decades-long friendship and professional partnership have produced a rich body of alternately funny and poignant solos, duets and group dances. Among the highlights this year is their notoriously funny, Velcro-infused Slapstuck.
Boston-based choreographer and Dances by Isadora/Boston co-director Kelli Edwards contributes a new duet for Parker and Kazin. Created in the tradition of Isadora Duncan – whose early-20th-century works were made almost exclusively for women – Edwards’ two-man duet offers a delightfully subversive twist.
Illinois-based dancemaker Sara Hook, whose work often reflexively spotlights the nature of performance and the tragicomic way dancers and their art are perceived, joins Parker for a new co-created duet. Hook is a longtime collaborator of Parker’s.
Three more Boston dance artists also contribute works to this year’s program. Kristin Wagner/Bodies Moving presents MILK, which explores the intimate labor of feeding a baby, the cultural weight placed on bodies, and the struggles and joys of loving and nourishing ourselves and our children. Cassie Wang presents SHEER (parcel of her breathing body), a solo performance that investigates containment, sociocultural conditioning, and the cycles and repetitions in which humans find themselves. Emily Jerant-Hendrickson’s BECOMING reflects how it feels to move forward in seasons of change. Where progress faces resistance, this dance embodies openness, surrender and emergence as momentum reshapes and reroutes human behavior.
“DANCE NOW Boston exemplifies what The Dance Complex does best: bringing together artists whose deep histories, bold ideas, and collaborative spirits resonate across generations and geographies,” says Executive Artistic Director Peter DiMuro. “With The Bang Group’s inventive, joie de vivre work at its core, and contributions from both longtime partners and new collaborators, this program honors dance traditions – but also winks at them – and provides a space where artists and audiences connect through creativity, humor and a shared experience.”
Tickets for DANCE NOW Boston are $25-$50 ($15 Student/EBT/WIC) plus fees at dancecomplex.org or eventbrite.com.
L to R David Parker and Jeffrey Kazin in ‘Slapstuck’. Photo courtesy The Bang Group