Ticket purchase to this Underground Uptown Dance Festival performance includes admission to the Rotunda Dance Party All Styles Battle at 8:30 pm with the Ladies of Hip-Hop.

See two Works & Process commissions centered on street dance by It’s Showtime NYC! and MasterZ at Work Dance Family. Then step up and step into the Ladies of Hip-Hop All Styles Battle in the rotunda.

New Yorkers are, by nature, archaeologists. Be it graffiti, hieroglyphics, or freestyle dance on the street, lived stories are shared to those willing to pause and take in the messages. See the world premiere of Pyramid, commissioned by Works & Process,featuring It’s Showtime NYC!, a company of dancers with a history of performing on New York’s streets and subways. Created in collaboration with composer and cellist Johnathan “Akuma” Moore, with dance dramaturgy by BRAT, Pyramid is an original music composition and dance work through which the composer and the company dancers each investigate the notion, “This is how you sound to me.” Moore’s composition animates each dancer’s struggles and triumphs as live building blocks of the pyramid, choreographed by It’s Showtime NYC! Artistic Director Cal Hunt. In his cello composition, Moore incorporates techniques typically employed by funk bassists, such as layered electronic loops, freeing himself to join the performance as a bonebreaker or flexN artist.

The evening also spotlights Black trans femme choreographer Courtney Washington, Mother Balenciaga—the founder of the Kiki House of Juicy Couture, a leader of the House of Balenciaga, and founder of MasterZ at Work Dance Family. Washington’s new Works & Process commission fuses street dance, street jazz, ballroom, vogue, and hip hop and is inspired by chance encounters at New York City diners and stories told over shared meals.

To close the evening, step up and step into the Ladies of Hip-Hop All Styles Battle in the rotunda. Founded by Michele Byrd-McPhee, Ladies of Hip-Hop Dance Collective (LDC) is an all-female intergenerational dance collective that creates dance works illuminating the strength, power, and diversity of women in hip hop. Ever present in the work are the freestyle, cipher, and call-and-response origins of street and club dance culture.

Pyramid is commissioned by Works & Process, Artists Community Alliance, Howard Gilman Foundation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Bethany Arts Community, Bridge Street Theatre, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council/The Arts Center at Governors Island, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature with special thanks to NOoSPHERE Arts, SummerStage, Herbert Von King Cultural Arts Center and City of New York Department of Parks and Recreation. Music composition commissioned by Charles and Joan Gross Family Foundation. The work has received Works & Process LaunchPAD residency support at Bethany Arts Community (2023). It’s Showtime NYC! is a program of Dancing in the Streets.

Commissioned by Works & Process, MasterZ at Work Dance Family’s new work has been developed in a Works & Process LaunchPAD residency at Modern Accord Depot (2024) and Bethany Arts Community (2025).

Left: Pyramid (in-process) by Cal Hunt and Johnathan “Akuma” Moore at Works & Process’s Underground Uptown Dance Festival at Lincoln Center on January 12, 2024. Photo: Lawrence Sumulong; right: MasterZ at Work Dance Family: ALL INCLUSIVE AND MORE by Courtney “Balenciaga” Washington, commissioned by Works & Process and performed at the Guggenheim Museum, November 21, 2022. Photo: Jada Rodriguez