The best dance shows in NYC this month

Having put The Nutcracker to bed for another year, NYCB returns to Lincoln Center for six more weeks. Principal among the offerings are the world premieres of resident choreographer Justin Peck's Mystic Familiar, set to a commissioned score by Dan Deacon, and artist in residence Alexei Ratmansky's suite of dances from Paquita. Other attractions include a centennial salute to ballerina Maria Tallchief and the return of Christopher Wheeldon's Carnival of Animals, narrated by John Lithgow; the engagement concludes with a two-week run of Peter Martins's full-length version of the Tchaikovsky classic Swan Lake (February 19–Mar 2). Also on the lineup are multiple pieces by Wheeldon and City Ballet's legendary founding choreographers, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. The troupe's current constellation of étoiles includes Ashley Bouder—who bids farewell to the company on February 13, after 25 years, in Balanchine's Firebird—alongside Tyler Angle, Chun Wai Chan, Adrian Danchig-Waring, Megan Fairchild, Jovani Furlan, Emilie Gerrity, Joseph Gordon, Anthony Huxley, Isabella LaFreniere, Sara Mearns, Roman Mejia, Mira Nadon, Tiler Peck, Unity Phelan, Taylor Stanley, Daniel Ulbricht, Andrew Veyette, Emma Von Enck, Peter Walker and Indiana Woodward. Visit the City Ballet website for a full schedule of events. Ashley Bouder in Firebird | Photograph: Courtesy Erin Baiano

[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...

It takes two to tango, and Germán Cornejo and Gisela Galeassi have famously done just that, rising to the highest levels of international acclaim in their passionate dance of choice; among other honors, they are both winners of the World Tango Championship. They make their Joyce debut, joined by eight other dancers, in an evening of Argentine seduction and flair conceived and choreographed by Cornejo and set to music by tango king Astor Piazzolla. 

American Liberty Ballet makes waves on Swan Lake with a new production that gives the old favorite an evironmentalist twist. Choreographed by ALB's artistic director, Valerie Mae Browne, and longtime principal dancer Alan McCormick, this two-act work is still set to Tchaikovsky's timeless score but now includes more timely elements such as oil-slicked birds and a villanous AI magician. The curtain-raiser is Browne's A Dance Under the Sun, set to Ravel’s Bolero and featuring designs by the mixed-media artist Anna Khachatryan. (Time Out readers can use discount code TimeOut2025 to save $19 per ticket.)

The annual Flamenco Festival returns to showcase a wide range of variations on the Spanish form at a dozen New York venues. The heart of the programming is at City Center, where this year's lineup includes: Alfonso Losa and Patricia Guerrero (Mar 6) in the NYC premiere of Alter Ego, joined by vocalists Sandra Carrasco and Ismael “El Bola” and guitarist Jose Manuel Martinez “El Peli"; Compañía Manuel Liñán (Mar 7) in the NYC premiere of Muerta de Amor (Dead in Love), featuring seven dancers and five musicians; and Compañía Eva Yerbabuena (Mar 8–9) in Yerbagüena (Oscuro Brillante), in which one of Flamenco's most celebrated figures draws from what she's learned in her 40-year career to combine and contrast old and new forms of the art. The festival also includes music, dance and film events at locations including Joe's Pub, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Le Poisson Rouge and Instituto Cervantes. Information and ticketing for all shows can be found on Flamenco Festival's Spanish-language website.

In its 17th season, Ariel Grossman's all-female company performs a mixed bill of Grossman's work, inspired by her experience of pregnancy: company favorites Mossy (2018) and Rust (2021); two dances, Converge and Lead Me, that were created virtually during the Covid pandemic; and the world premiere of a new piece. The earlier works are set to original music by Stefania de Kenessey and Grossman's husband, David Homan; the last has been created with musician Summer Dregs, who accompanies it live.

Israel's world-class Batsheva Dance Company, led by Ohad Naharin, goes BAM once again with MOMO, a full-length work about individual and collective identity that continues to explore the possibilities of the elastic dance language that Naharin calls Gaga. Laurie Anderson and Kronos Quartet's 2018 album Landfall provides most of the soundscape.

The 92nd Street Y's Harkness Dance Center presents a double bill of distinguished African-American dance. Ronald K. Brown and his troupe, Evidence, perform Brown's 1998 piece Upside Down, which is set to music by the Nigerian singer Wunmi and was originally devised with Côte d'Ivoire's Rokiya Kone and her Jeune Ballet d’Afrique Noire. Joan Myers Brown's venerable Philadanco! visits from the City of Brotherly Love to make its 92NY debut with one of its most popular works, Pretty Is Skin Deep, Ugly is to the Bone, which was created for the company in 1976 by the pioneering Black modern dancer maker Talley Beatty.

The German company Gauthier Dance//Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, founded by Canadian expat Eric Gauthier, made its Joyce debut in 2017 with a full-length ballet about the Russian dance legend Vaslav Nijinsky. It returns in 2025 with a varied bill that includes Gauthier's own solo piece ABC as well as three works by Israeli dance makers: Sharon Eyal's envy-themed Point and Hofesh Shechter's Swan Lake riff ;Swan Cake—both commissioned by the company—and Ohad Naharin's ebullient and much-loved 1999 neostandard Minus 16.

Dance titan Twyla Tharp returns to City Center to mark her company's 60th anniversary with a pair of diamonds: her long 1998 piece Diabelli, which rides the changing moods of Beethoven's challenging Diabelli Variations; and her new work, Slacktide, set to Philip Glass’s Aguas da Amazonia (arranged and performed live on custom-designed instruments by members of Third Coast Percussion). The ensemble includes Renan Cerdeiro, Angela Falk, Miriam Gittens, Zachary Gonder, Oliver Greene-Cramer, Kyle Halford, Daisy Jacobson, Marzia Memoli, Nicole Ashley Morris, Molly Rumble, Alexander Peters and Reed Tankersley.