2026 Season
Tickets are now on sale for our 2026 Season, which offers bold, transformative productions that offer new perspectives on art and culture. These premieres and commissions from leading artistic voices expand our expectations of what dance, theater, visual art, and performance can be.
Wade Thompson Drill Hall
March 2–21, 2026
Romeo & Juliet Suite
This site-specific dance-drama by celebrated choreographer, director, and filmmaker Benjamin Millepied reimagines Prokofiev’s iconic ballet through a contemporary lens by exceeding the parameters of a traditional stage setting with live cameras following the dancers throughout the Armory’s entire building. With the lead roles performed by different configurations of gender pairings for each performance, the piece breaks from stereotypical couple roles in a universal celebration of love.
June 10–August 2, 2026
clinamen
Acclaimed artist, musician, and composer Céleste Boursier-Mougenot presents the largest iteration to date of his ongoing aquatic and musical installation, featuring a series of circular basins filled with water in which ordinary ceramic bowls float and gently collide to produce melodious chiming sounds. These physical and sonic configurations are constantly changing, creating a bespoke auditory experience that invites audiences to contemplate time and sound as both individual and collective experiences.
June 10–August 2, 2026
clinamen
Acclaimed artist, musician, and composer Céleste Boursier-Mougenot presents the largest iteration to date of his ongoing aquatic and musical installation, featuring a series of circular basins filled with water in which ordinary ceramic bowls float and gently collide to produce melodious chiming sounds. These physical and sonic configurations are constantly changing, creating a bespoke auditory experience that invites audiences to contemplate time and sound as both individual and collective experiences.
September 14–25, 2026
The Cherry Orchard
Award-winning director and dramatist Simon Stone returns to the Armory with his radical adaptation of Chekhov’s final play about a family in crisis. Reimagined in modern-day South Korea and brought to life in a transparent glass house by an all-Korean cast, this tragicomedy offers audiences a voyeuristic view into the characters’ private lives as they navigate change and domestic conflict.
October 14–18, 2026
Music for 18 Musicians: Staged Variations
In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of its premiere and the 90th birthday of its composer Steve Reich, the musical visionary Alan Pierson stages this masterpiece in a durational cycle by enveloping audiences to reveal the intricate structure of the composition, performed by three generations of musicians with connective interludes by special guests to hear the iconic composition anew and from within.
October 14–18, 2026
Music for 18 Musicians: Staged Variations
In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of its premiere and the 90th birthday of its composer Steve Reich, the musical visionary Alan Pierson stages this masterpiece in a durational cycle by enveloping audiences to reveal the intricate structure of the composition, performed by three generations of musicians with connective interludes by special guests to hear the iconic composition anew and from within.
December 8–20, 2026
Balkan Erotic Epic
Visionary performance artist Marina Abramović returns to the Armory to realize the North American premiere of her largest-scale performance work to date, combining dance, song, and ritual to experience dramatic adaptations of Balkan mythology and folklore enacted by a cast of 50 performers. The durational work commissioned by the Armory merges traditional elements of performance with sensuality and eroticism, removing modern taboos to reclaim the body as a site of power, mystery, and transformation.
In Our Historic Period Rooms
Artists Studio
Curated by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur Fellow Jason Moran, this series showcases a diverse mix of some of today’s most creative voices who have a distinct relationship to sound with a uniquely visual aesthetic. All of these artists and musicians defy categorization and blur the boundaries of performance, allowing them to freely explore their artistic sensibilities and exciting new directions in their creative practice. Realized in the Veterans Room—a monument to the American Aesthetic Movement designed by Louis C. Tiffany & Co., Associated Artists—these interventions expressly mirror the innovative spirit of the exceptional young artists present at the room’s inception.
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Artists Studio
Jason Moran
In celebration of 10 years of performances and installations by imaginative innovators that blend artistic forms, the series curator assembles an ensemble of special guests and past series performers for an evening of performance and reflection in the very space where these daring new works came to life.
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Artists Studio
Joy Guidry
This multifaceted artist creates a ruminative performance in the spirit of a Southern church revival and based on her ambient album Five Prayers, reimagining it into movements based on different themes of Black American spirituality and artistic expression, ranging from jazz and minimalism to opera, ballet, blues, and gospel.
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Artists Studio
Jamire Williams
This multidisciplinary artist creates an immersive and experimental solo percussion performance that pushes the boundaries of rhythm, texture, and memory through a dynamic interplay of acoustic instruments, vintage samplers, and analog tape machines.
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Artists Studio
Raven Chacon
A MacArthur Fellow and first Native American winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Music showcases his unique artistry with a new work that cuts across boundaries of visual art and performance in his ongoing illumination of landscapes, their inhabitants, and histories.
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Artists Studio
IONE
This noted sound artist returns to the Veterans Room to lead a deep listening exercise—Listening with Dreams—with artistic collaborators to explore the difference between the involuntary and voluntary nature of hearing and the selective nature of listening through movement and interactive sonic meditations.
Making Space at the Armory
America at 250: Declarations of Interdependence
Held in our historic period rooms and spaces, this insightful series of cutting-edge conversations, performances, and installations provide a unique forum for bridging art and culture. These happenings—curated by professor and Guggenheim fellow Tavia Nyong’o—make space for new points of view and unique perspectives from a diverse array of artists, scholars, cultural leaders, and social trailblazers. Taking inspiration from the 250th anniversary of the birth of America and the Declaration of Independence as a radical act that inaugurated that emancipation, this season invites audiences to become active participants in the conversations and connections to carry that tradition forward through declarations of interdependence that deepen and expand our imagination of freedom.
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Making Space at the Armory
Fox Tactics: Artists At Work In Trying Times
How do artists create in times and places of real risk of reprisal? This Sunday Salon gathers an international roster of artists who make daring work in the face of censorship and political backlash to explore this topic.
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Making Space at the Armory
Now Is The Time: Artists Go To Work – Part I
Drawing inspiration from Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison’s belief that in challenging times artists must go to work, this kick-off of a two-part convening frames America’s 250th anniversary not as a celebration of completion but as a call for ongoing struggle, creativity, and mutual care across communities. Audiences are invited to gather and hear artists and scholars give testimony on the current state of the arts in America.
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Making Space at the Armory
Live From The Armory
The Fall of the City by Archibald MacLeish was the first American verse play for radio and was broadcast live from the Armory in 1937. Inspired by the premiere of this new art form, this meetup gathers podcasters before an Armory audience to record episodes for their series on topics related to science and credulity, confidence and conspiracy, and the power of storytelling.
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Making Space at the Armory
Now Is The Time: Artists Go To Work – Part II
Following the public discussion in Part I earlier in the season, this two-day gathering in the year-long reckoning showcases the fruits of collaborative work on what remains unfinished in American democracy. Audiences are invited to attend keynote conversations, artist salons, open studios, intimate performances, and interactive workshops held in the Armory’s historic rooms.
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Making Space at the Armory
Voices Rising: Korean Diaspora Voices in Performance
This convening, presented in partnership with the Serica Initiative, considers how Korean artists are influencing U.S. culture—from the global reach of K-pop and K-drama to the vitality of the contemporary stage—while carrying forward deep artistic traditions from the Korean and Korean-American diasporas.
Recital Series
Performed in the Armory’s restored interiors, the Recital Series has developed a stellar reputation for allowing audiences to enjoy the intimacy of music making through thoughtfully curated programs of lieder, art song, and contemporary works in a space which marries excellent acoustics and an austerely elegant Gilded Age interior. This season features some of today’s most exciting musical interpreters from the greatest performance stages in an intimate setting, exciting New York and North American recital debuts, and thrilling premieres of new compositions that evolve the art form.
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Recital Series
Fazil Say
The Turkish pianist and composer comes to the Board of Officers Room to display his virtuosity with a performance of J.S. Bach’s beloved Goldberg Variations paired with his own innovative compositions, harkening back to pianists of the past who showcased their unbounded artistry performing their works and improvisations for the public.
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Recital Series
Liv Redpath & Harry Rylance
The leading soprano leggero makes her New York solo recital debut with a uniquely curated program of arias and arts songs that beautifully showcase her breathtaking coloratura, agility, and brightness.
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Recital Series
Carlo Vistoli & Giulio Zappa
Get to know this countertenor star on the rise when he makes his North American recital debut with a program of arias, art songs, and lieder in the most personal of settings – the Board of Officers Room.
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Recital Series
Ben Bliss & Christopher Allen
This Master Mozartean comes to the Board of Officers Room to showcase his honeyed, lyric voice and warm, luminous timbre in an intimate evening of arias and art songs.
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Recital Series
Deepa Johnny & Jonathan Ware
Expect to witness the undeniable stage presence, velvety bravado, and expressive palette the Omani-born mezzo-soprano brings to the opera stage when she makes her North American recital debut in the Board of Officers Room with a thoughtful program of arias and art songs from composers from around the globe.
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Recital Series
Steven Schick & Tyshawn Sorey
Having developed a decades-long personal friendship and musical relationship with fruitful collaborations that push boundaries and extend cultural norms, this dynamic duo return for the world premiere of a new evening length percussion piece that explores legacy through cross-generational collaboration as a mirror of the past and an illuminated path to the future.
Under Construction Series
Get an inside look into the creative process of the Armory’s Artists-in-Residence, who set up studios and offer intimate public previews of works-in-progress. The Armory’s period rooms provide a unique backdrop for their workshops, serving as both inspiration and as a collaborator in the development of their work.
Under Construction Series
Petra
Armory Artist-in-Residence Tina Satter and Half Straddle present a work-in-progress showing of her adaptation of the psychological film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, following a fashion designer living in self-imposed isolation whose world unravels.