Presenting and commissioning innovative performances since 1940, the Performing Arts program offers a season that spans contemporary dance, experimental theater, new jazz, avant-folk, new global and alt-classical music, and the multiple hybrids of forms in between. More

Featured Performance

Kyle Abraham / Abraham.In.Motion

“Watched carefully, Abraham’s group choreography displays an intensely naked understanding of humanity; watching Abraham dance alone is deeply moving.” —Boston Globe More

Featured Commission

Cynthia Hopkins

“Cynthia Hopkins is the definition of postmodern artistry. Her work transcends single genres and mediums and defies definition.” —New York Press More

The Plot Thickens

You’d think that among theater people, the biggest control freaks would be an artistic director and a playwright—those responsible for the company’s aesthetic vision and the text used onstage. But when Elevator Repair Service’s John Collins and playwright… More

Jeff Severns Guntzel

Bob Mould’s Unbroken Line

“Where did punk rock start? Who cares? It’s not where did it start, it’s why did it start?” said Bob Mould in 1981. Before the Bob Mould Band and Sugar, before a prolific solo career, Mould was part of punk mainstays Hüsker Dü. Jeff… More

Paul Schmelzer

Wild Man, Iconoclast, Dreamer: 60 on John Zorn at 60 (Part 2)

“One cannot categorize [John] Zorn,” says cellist Fred Sherry, who dubs the New York music icon “a big subject: friend, composer, wild man, confidante, connoisseur, dreamer, idealist.” In a two-part online… More

Paul Schmelzer

Visionary, Mensch, Dude: 60 on John Zorn at 60 (Part I)

When we asked an array of musicians and artists—including Laurie Anderson, Nels Cline, and Bill Frisell—to share their reflections about John Zorn on the occasion of his 60th birthday, three… More

Philip Bither

Trisha Brown: From Falling and Its Opposite, and All the In-Betweens

Philip Bither highlights some of Trisha Brown’s less-recognized but tremendously influential dance innovations, from aerial movement inventions to equipment-based performance. More

Julie Caniglia

Sibyl Kempson: The Push and Pull of Playwrighting

Elevator Repair Service became an international sensation with Gatz—part of a trilogy involving onstage readings of classic dead-guy literature: Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Hemingway. So what happens when they co-create their next… More