The best dance shows in NYC this month

[Note: Queen of Hearts returns in February for an encore run, with Lindsay Rose in the title role.] Lewis Carroll's trippy Alice in Wonderland books have inspired many theatrical spectacles, but Company XIV's seductive Queen of Hearts is a singular sexcess: a transporting fusion of haute burlesque, circus, dance and song. Your fall down the glamorous rabbit hole begins upon entering the troupe's louche Bushwick lair, where scantily clad server-performers slink about in flattering red lighting. A cursory knowledge of the source material will help you make sense of the show’s three-act cavalcade of Alice-inspired routines, as our blue-haired heroine embarks on an NC-17 coming-of-age journey under the guidance of the White Rabbit. As usual, Company XIV impresario Austin McCormick has assembled an array of alluring and highly skilled artists, who look smashing in Zane Pihlstrom's lace-and-crystal-encrusted costumes. A contortionist emerges in an S/M-vinyl cocoon and transforms into a beauteous butterfly; mustachioed twins, as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, perform a cheeky spin on the Marx Brothers' mirror trick. As the title royal, voluptuous vocalist Storm Marrero rules over all in her stunning 11-o'clock number. With its soundtrack of pop songs, attractive ensemble cast and immersive aesthetics—plus chocolate and specialty cocktails—Queen of Hearts feels like Moulin Rouge! for actual bohemians. Hell, it even has a cancan. Like Alice, you may resist returning to reality when...

The New York–based classical Chinese dance company and promotional behemoth Shen Yun, founded in 2006 by practitioners of Falun Gong, is perhaps better known for its saturation advertising—assisted by Falun Gong's far-right media arm The Epoch Times—than for its traditionalist pageants of precommunist Chinese culture. Drawing on ancient folklore, the company surveys five millennia of Chinese culture and spirituality in a production that combines ornate costumes, elaborate staging and a large orchestra that features both Eastern and Western instruments. 

The Martha Graham company keeps the modern dance master's legacy alive at the Joyce with a set of programs that juxtapose classic Graham pieces with works by modern choreographers. The run is divided into three major programs plus two one-offs. The Gala Opening on April 1 includes Graham's Clytemnestra Act II (1958) and the world premiere of Baye & Asa’s Cortege. Those two pieces are also in Program A (Apr 2, 4, 10, 12) along with Hofesh Shechter’s Cave (2022) and the world premiere of Xin Ying's Letter to Nobody, which she created in collaboration with Mimi Yin. Program B (Apr 3, 6, 9, 13) features two Graham masterworks of Americana, Frontier (1935) and Rodeo (1942) as well as Jamar Roberts's We the People (2024) and Virginie Mécène's reconstructions of a pair of early Graham solos, Revolt (1927) and Immigrant (1928). Cave and Cortege recur in Program C (Apr 5, 6, 8, 11, 13) in tandem with Graham's Brontë-sisters ballet Deaths and Entrances (1943) and her Greek-myth duet Errand into the Maze (1947). The family matinee on April 12 comprises Rodeo, We the People and a performance of Graham's Panorama (1935) by teenage dancers from this year's All-City Panorama Project.

Many dance shows take themselves very seriously indeed, but not this one. In Caitlin Trainor's monthly dance-comedy show, which she and her company have been developing since 2019, a cast of five uses the language of movement to tell outrageous stories that may or may not be true—and the audience votes to decide whether it believes them. 

The bright New York City Ballet star Sara Mearns curates a show for City Center's Artists at the Center series that comprises a pair of world premieres. In the dance-theater piece Don’t Go Home, by choreographer Guillaume Côté and writer Jonathon Young, she is joined by NYCB's newest principal, Gilbert Bolden III. For a new work by Jamar Roberts, set to live music by Caroline Shaw, Means and Roberts are complemented onstage by Jeroboam Bozeman, Ghrai DeVore-Stokes and Anna Greenberg.  

Catch a rising étoile at this year's edition of Valentina Kozlova Dance Foundation's annual contest for young dancers. Performers from around the world—divided into four categories by age, which can range from 11 to 26—compete before esteemed judges for a variety of company contracts, scholarships and prizes. The rounds of competition start at 1pm on three successive days, performing selections from the classical repertoire (April 8 and 9) as well as original contemportary and freestyle dances (April 10). Each round lasts six or seven hours; spectators may stay for the whole thing or come and go as they please. Winners perform at the competition's concluding gala at the Gerald W. Lynch Theatre on April 12. (Tickets for the gala cost $50 and can be purchased here.)

La MaMa's annual festival runs riot with dance in its 20th edition, curated by the beloved Nicky Paraiso. Nearly all of the participating shows are lopal, national or world premieres. The lineup includes: John Jasperse Projects' Tides (Apr 10–13); Keith A. Thompson & danceTactics performance group's Love Alone Anthology Project (Apr 10–13); a shared bill of Daniel Gwirtzman Dance Company's e-Motion and Pat Catterson's Tremor and Then (Apr 18–20); a group show of works by Hunter College and NYU Tisch MFA Choreographers (Apr 18–20); bluemouth inc.'s Lucy AI (Apr 24, 25); a pairing of Megumi Eda's solo Please Cry with a collaboration between dancer Nic Gareiss and fiddler Alexis Chartrand (April 25-27); a double bill of Jesse Zaritt and Pamela Pietro's dance for no ending and an untitled piece by Jordan Demetrius Lloyd (Apr 25–27); and Amalia Suryani's Ta’na Nirau (Apr 26, 27). The festival concludes in early May with an Emerging Choreographers Program curated by Martita Abril and Blaze Ferrer (May 1–4) and a shared program created in a partnership with the New York Arab Festival and curated by Adham Hafez (May 1–4). Individual shows cost $30, but multishow package deals are available: $45 for two, $60 for three and $95 for five. 

The ballet company Dance Theatre of Harlem returns to City Center for four performances. The mixed bill on April 10 and 13 is a bevy of firsts: the world premiere of Jodie Gates's The Passage of Being; the New York premiere of The Cookout by Robert Garland, who is now in his second season as DTH's artistic director; and the company premieres of William Forsythe's The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude and George Balanchine’s Donizetti Variations. The April 12 performance swaps The Cookout for an older Garland work: the return of 1999 Return, a company favorite set to music by James Brown and Aretha Franklin. The gala program on April 11, commemorating the door-opening 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, comprises the Forsythe piece, excerpts from the Balanchine piece and from Garland's We Are Brown, and a speech by Janai Nelson, the President of the Legal Defense Fund.

Tom Gold, a former soloist with New York City Ballet, has been helming his own neoclassical company since 2008. For its spring 2025 season, the group performs the world premiere of Gold's full-length piece Le Voyage, set to chansons by Michel Legrand, including several from the charming 1967 film musical Les Demoiselles de Rochefort. Singer Olivia Chindamo and pianist Matthew Sheens perform their arrangements of the songs live to accompany the dancers (including Emily Cardea, Brian Gephart, Cara Seymour and Sage Wilson), who perform the piece in the round at the Bohemian National Hall. 

The L.A. company Bodytraffic returns to the Joyce with a evening that explores sensations of memory, nostalgia and the things that may trigger them. The bill comprises three works: Trey McIntyre's Mayday, a laurel to Buddy Holly set to such songs as “Peggy Sue” and “That’ll Be the Day”; Matthew Neenan's I Forgot the Start, which employs music by Sinéad O’Connor and others to explore love won and lost; and Juel D. Lane's Incense Burning on a Saturday Morning: The Maestro, which depicts the artist Ernie Barnes as he works on one of his most famous paintings.