Harlem Stage is a performing arts center for visionary artists of color in Manhattanville, West Harlem, Manhattan. It presents Black, Indigenous, Asian, and Latin music, dance, and theatre. Having developed emerging talent for over 40 years, Harlem Stage is part of the conversation of what it means to be American today.
Thank you for sponsoring Latin dance and music. It’s an honor to work with you.
Latin Culture at Harlem Stage
Eddie Palmieri is a Salsa and Latin Jazz Legend
BLUE NOTE, Greenwich Village, Manhattan 🇵🇷
Camille A. Brown Curates and Dances Black Joy at Harlem Stage
HARLEM STAGE, Manhattanville, West Harlem, Manhattan 🇺🇸
nora chipaumire “ShebeenDUB” World Premiere Tryptich Nehanda Radio Opera, ShebeenDUB Performance, and DUB Dance Party at Harlem Stage
HARLEM STAGE, Manhattanville, West Harlem, Manhattan 🇿🇼 🇺🇸
Black Arts Movement: Then & Now Conference
HARLEM STAGE, Manhattanville, West Harlem, Manhattan 🇺🇸
Harlem Stage News
JUNE
Gala
The Harlem Stage 40th Anniversary Gala on June 3, 2024 welcomed new Artistic Director and CEO Dr. Indira Etwaroo who said, “Harlem is our home, but the world is our stage.”
The first director of the Steve Jobs Theater at Apple Park in Cupertino, California is an award-winning producer, director, scholar, and arts and culture executive. She led The Black Seed, a financial incubator for Black Theater, and was the inaugural Executive of the Chadwick Boseman Foundation. She also led the Billie Holiday Theatre in Brooklyn, and was the Founding Executive Producer and Director of The Greene Space, and Founding Executive Producer and Director of NPR Presents.
African American Contemporary Dance
E-MOVES
Camille A. Brown & Guests perform works on “Black Joy,” featuring work Brown, Chloe Davis, Juel D. Lane, Mayte Natalio, Rickey Tripp, and Maleek Washington; at Harlem Stage in Morningside Heights, West Harlem; on June 14-15, 2024 at 7:30pm. From $25. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
About Harlem Stage
The Croton Aqueduct Gate House was built in 1884 and decommissioned in 1984. In 2006, the gate house, a place where water flows, was converted into Harlem Stage. Water is life. In Mother Africa, we worship water, and in the Caribbean, we say, “somos hijos del mar” (we are children of the sea).
Strong curation brings stars and rising talent to Harlem Stage. Don’t you wish you saw Harry Belafonte, Max Roach, Sekou Sundiata, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, or Tito Puente there?
Harlem Stage’s small logo for tabs on a web browser, looks to us like it’s based on the Yowa, the Kongo cosmological diagram. It’s a cross in a circle. The horizon in the Yowa is the Kalûnga line. It’s a water boundary between worlds, which in the Kongo context, is the Atlantic Ocean.
The circle turns counterclockwise, like the sun’s journey across the sky, from east to west. We think it’s why the line of dance in Argentine tango (an African Diasporic dance) is counterclockwise. If we are correct, this has a lot of meaning for a former waterworks that presents African Diaspora culture in the Americas. It’s a rich symbol, full of meaning, just like Harlem Stage.
Artists
You get to see famous artists, and some who are going to be famous. To date, five Harlem Stage artists have gone on to win MacArthur Genius Fellowship Awards: Kyle Abraham (2013), Vijay Iyer (2013), Jason Moran (2010), Bill T. Jones (1994), and Cecil Taylor (1991).
- Circa ’95, Puerto Rican hip-hop. 🇵🇷
- Curtis Brothers, Puerto Rican, Cuban jazz. 🇵🇷 🇨🇺
- Dafnis Prieto and Luciana Souza, Cuban and Brazilian jazz. 🇨🇺 🇧🇷
- Flor De Toloache Mexican tropical mariachi. 🇲🇽 + 🇨🇺 🇩🇴 🇵🇷
- Leyla McCalla Haitian classical, folk. 🇭🇹
- Louis Hayes, African American NEA Jazz Master drummer. 🇺🇸
- nora chipaumire Zimbabwean Shona dancer and performing artist. 🇿🇼
- Pablo Mayor Folklore Urbano, Colombian salsa and folk. 🇨🇴
- Pedrito Martinez Cuban rumba, timba, and jazz percussionist. 🇨🇺
- Repertorio Español Cuban and Dominican Spanish-language, repertory theatre. 🇨🇺 🇩🇴
- Yasser Tejeda, Dominican alternative. 🇩🇴
Harlem Stage Tickets
Harlem Stage
150 Convent Ave
(at West 135th St)
Manhattanville, West Harlem
Subways
(1) to 137th St – City College
(A)(C) or (B) to 135th Sts
More Information
harlemstage.org
X (Twitter) @MyHarlemStage
Instagram @harlemstage
Recently
Contemporary Art, Dance and Opera
E-MOVES
Zimbabwean dancer and choreographer nora chipaumire presents “afternow,” a monumental sound installation; “Nehanda,” a radio opera about a female Shona spirit who inspired colonial resistance in Central Africa; a performance of “ShebeenDUB,” an indictment of empire in the afternow installation; followed by a dub dance party; at Harlem Stage in Morningside Heights, West Harlem; on May 17-18, 2024. 2pm Radio Opera Installation, 6pm doors, 7:30pm performance, 9pm-midnight dance party. From $10. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸 🇿🇼
African American Contemporary Dance
E-MOVES
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company performs “Degga” (1995) created with Max Roach and Toni Morrison; at Harlem Stage in Morningside Heights, West Harlem; on April 19-20, 2024 at 7:30pm. From $25. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸
African American Jazz, Bebop, Chamber Music, Hip Hop, Afro-Everything
WATERWORKS ESTABLISHED ARTIST COMMISSION
Trumpeter Ambros Akinmusire presents his “Banyan Seed” project which explores how jazz grew into bebop, chamber music, hip hop, and now Afro-everything; at Harlem Stage in Morningside Heights, West Harlem; on Friday, March 29, 2024 at 7:30pm. From $25. harlemstage.org 🇺🇸 🇸🇸 🇺🇬
Banyan Seed is an interesting concept. The tree is a ficus native to India. In New York City, it is a common house plant, but in tropical climates the ficus grows big and drops roots from its branches. It’s literally a walking tree. It’s a great metaphor for the African Diaspora, the world’s largest diaspora which puts down roots everywhere it goes.
40th Anniversary Season
The 40th Anniversary Season theme is “Looking Back to Create Forward.” This is the West African concept of “Sankofa.”