A work of magical realism narrated by and featuring the viewpoints of six women, Marks of RED continues award-winning choreographer Shamel Pitts’s research exploring Black embodiment, aliveness, and human connection. Marks of RED is an Afrofuturistic meditation on the “womb space,” divining the effect that memory has on our experiences, senses, bodies, reality, and imaginative possibilities.

This multidisciplinary work includes scenic designs by Mimi Lien, projection lights by Lucca Del Carlo, and production by TRIBE arts collective. Marks of RED explores the nuanced multiplicity and deep complexity of self-expression and the perceived spaces for regeneration, enfoldment, implosion, rupture, and potential.

About TRIBE

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Support for Marks of RED is provided, in part, by The David Henry Fund for Performance.

“A tour-de-force” —The New York Times

“What is life? Is it the thing that happens between birth and when you die?” These questions animate Leslie Cuyjet’s wickedly funny and deeply moving For All Your Life, a performance and social experiment that investigates the value of Black life and death. Encapsulating numerous characters through film and live performance, Cuyjet explores and satirizes the labyrinthine world of the life insurance business, its darker links to the transatlantic slave trade, and how monetary value is affixed to human life. Are you prepared for what comes next? For All Your Life may have the answers.

Based in Brooklyn, NY, Leslie Cuyjet is a performer and choreographer who aims to conjure life-long questions of identity; confuse and disrupt traditional narratives; and demonstrate the angsty, explosive, sensitive, pioneering excellence of the Black woman. Hailed as “a potent choreographic force” by The New York Times, Cuyjet is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow and received New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Awards in 2019 and 2022.

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Leslie Cuyjet: For All Your Life is funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.

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Choreographers Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener return to the ICA with their newest experiment, Open Machine. Exploring the relationship between human and machine intelligence, Mitchell and Riener enact a constantly shifting, multi-sensory performance that blurs the boundaries between public and private perceptions. Featuring a sweeping sound score by electronic musician Mas Ysa, the duo is joined by five other dancers who erupt in a dynamic choreography for the stage that reimagines live gathering, decision-making, and our influence on a technologically mediated and rapidly changing world. 

About Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener

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Taíno AfroBorikua award-winning choreographer, interdisciplinary movement artist, and artistic director of Danza Orgánica, Mar Parrilla will respond to Caroline Monnet: Man-made Land through expressive dance and movement. 

Join Parrilla after the performance for a Q+A. 

About Caroline Monnet: Man-made Land

About Mar Parrilla

Join Summer Stages Dance @ ICA resident artists Eiko Otake and DonChristian Jones for a workshop designed for “people who love to move or want to move with delicious feeling.” Explore exercises designed to focus awareness, coordination, and sensing the reciprocal natures of movement and emotion. No dance training is required, and all abilities are welcome.    

2025 Summer Stages Dance @ ICA/Boston is made possible, in part, with the support of Jane Karol and Howard Cooper, Carol and John Moriarty, and The Aliad Fund.

Making their Boston debut, Canadian contemporary dance company Anne Plamondon Productions explore the body as a source of resilience, beauty, and hope in Myokine. Secreted by muscles when the body is in motion, myokines are often called “molecules of hope” for the sense of well-being and optimism they provide. For Plamondon, this process symbolizes the healing role of the body when faced with the increasing complexities and troubling issues of our time. It embodies the essential function of dance to release tension, emotion, and anxiety—bringing to life the power of our bodies when united in movement.

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Known for its expansive vision, versatility, and technical prowess, Doug Varone and Dancers creates kinetically thrilling dances that reflect the complexity of the human spirit. From the smallest gesture to full-throttled bursts of movement, Varone’s work takes your breath away. Doug Varone and Dancers returns with highlights from its 30-year repertory including Lux (2006) and the Boston premieres of Home (1988), and Restore (2024).

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Each summer the ICA offers residencies for choreographers to develop new work. Get a special sneak peek at their efforts during these work-in-progress showings of their exciting new projects.

Eiko Otake and DonChristian Jones | July 6, 2 PM

Inspired by the ever-changing nature of water and the body as a river of memories, Eiko Otake and DonChristian Jones, who began their collaboration in 2017, will continue to develop and expand their artistic connection at the ICA. In a work-in-progress presentation overlooking the Boston Harbor, Otake and Jones will share new materials and engage in conversations with visitors.

Late seating not guaranteed.

Content advisory: This showing contains nudity.

About Eiko Otake and DonChristian Jones

Netta Yerushalmy with Katherine Profeta, Alla Kovgan, Tuce Yasak, Paula Matthusen, and Mieke Ulfig | July 13, 2pm

In July, the museum will host acclaimed choreographer Netta Yerushalmy for a week-long residency as she develops a new interdisciplinary performance centered around female aging and its impact on art-making. Yerushalmy will create the work alongside five other collaborators, including Katherine Profeta (writer), Alla Kovgan (filmmaker), Tuce Yasak (light /space design), Paula Matthusen (music), and Mieke Ulfig (graphic art). Be among the first to see this new work take shape in a special preview showing and learn about their collaborative working process.

About Netta Yerushalmy

2025 Summer Stages Dance @ ICA/Boston is made possible, in part, with the support of George and Ann Colony, Jane Karol and Howard Cooper, Carol and John Moriarty, Andrew and Linda Hammett Ory, and The Aliad Fund.

Urban Bush Women (UBW) burst onto the dance scene in 1984 with bold, innovative, demanding, and exciting works that brought under-told stories to life. Originally founded by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the company, now under the co-artistic direction of Chanon Judson and Mame Diarra Spies, continues to weave contemporary dance, music, and text with the history, culture, and spiritual traditions of the African Diaspora.

A centerpiece of Urban Bush Women’s 40th Anniversary Celebration, This is Risk looks forward and back in celebrating four decades of operating at the vanguard of movement and social activism. At the ICA, Urban Bush Women will perform an evening of iconic works celebrating the Company’s 40-year history including Visibility, Batty Moves, Blues Medicine, and Shelter and will feature live music performed by Grace Galu Kalambay and Lucianna Padmore. This is Risk takes the audience through intentional storytelling to the next space of collective brilliance.

Following Saturday’s performance, members of Urban Bush Women will join Grisha Coleman for a post-performance conversation. Coleman is Professor of Movement, Computation, and Digital Media at Northeastern University and a former member of Urban Bush Women.

Read the digital program

Also, catch the Urban Bush Women leading an all-levels movement workshop at Dance Complex on March 19! Learn more

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David Dorfman Dance’s truce songs explores how our world might look, and how we might feel, if traditional truces were extended by a day, then a month, then years—ending one small war on humanity at a time. DDD’s trademark risky, frisky, and vulnerable movement, accompanied by an original score by Lizzy de Lise and Sam Crawford alongside text developed by Dorfman and the company embodies truce with self, with others, and with the world, as dancing bodies serve as conduits for a momentary peace.

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