THE KITCHEN ANNOUNCES FALL 2025 SEASON
Artists This Season Break Open Histories and Reinvent New Pathways Forward
The Kitchen today announces its Fall 2025 season. This Fall, The Kitchen affirms its role as a vital cultural institution and hub for experimentation—deepening its mission to empower artists with the space and resources needed to stretch the limits of traditional mediums, asking new and invigorating questions about the avant-garde and the world. From its loft at Westbeth (163B Bank Street, 4th Floor Loft), The Kitchen continues to offer audiences an immersive season where genres across dance, sound, and image collide and intersect, histories are revisited and expanded, and artistic practice is reimagined.
From Dance and Process, The Kitchen’s longest running series, culminating performances by this year’s cohort of movement-based artists, to [siccer], a multi-genre exhibition and performances by artist and choreographer Will Rawls co-presented with Performance Space New York and Crossing the Line Festival, to a performance restaging Lucinda Childs ’s 1964 work, Street Dance, co-presented with Performa to the newest iteration of Claire Chase ’s Density 2036 initiative, a 24-year project creating new flute repertory leading up to the 100th anniversary of Edgard Varèse’s landmark 1936 flute solo, Density 21.5— this Fall season at The Kitchen expands wildly across various disciplines.
The Kitchen’s Executive Director & Chief Curator Legacy Russell says “In a moment nationally and worldwide where experimental practices are being challenged, redacted, and censored, The Kitchen celebrates and recommits to the long arc of its mission and values, welcoming a season of artists and innovators who bring rigor, depth, and vision to the next generation of the avant-garde.”
Returning for its longest-running series, Dance and Process stages an interrogation of methods of choreographic and dance practice, whereby artists challenge default structures in their own work and the field at large. Since July 2025, artists Ayano Elson, Niala, and Stacy Lynn Smith engage in weekly sessions sharing material in development and receiving structured feedback from DAP organizers / facilitators mayfield brooks and Niall Jones. In late September, the artists will present culminating performances from their residency (September 18–20, at The Kitchen at Westbeth).
(October 16–November 22, at The Kitchen at Westbeth) Wills Rawls ’s [siccer] utilizes photography,cinema, and stage techniques to interrogate the boundaries between the living, the captured, the rehearsed, and the performed. Stop-motion animation and still-image projections of Black dancers onto suspended chroma green frames create a layered, glitching visual landscape displayed throughout The Kitchen’s loft. The work’s title references the Latin “[sic],” highlighting the ways Black vernacular and performance evade normative forms of “correction,” suggesting a mode of being that is iterative and perpetually becoming—echoing the core themes of the work itself. Co-presented by Performance Space New York and L’Alliance New York’s Crossing The Line Festival, the live performances of [siccer] (November 20–22) accompany the artist’s exhibition at The Kitchen, a book published by Wendy’s Subway, and an album published by the artist.
Reigniting Lucinda Childs ’s groundbreaking Street Dance, originally performed July 23, 1964, The Kitchen and Performa present a restaging of Childs ’s seminal work, a landmark of postmodern performance. Childs will restage this new iteration, Street Dance (1964–2025), just blocks from the original site (November 21–23). Featuring performances by Childs and David Thomson, the project is curated by Lou Forster, produced by The Blanket, and co-produced and co-commissioned by The Kitchen with Frac Bretagne, Frac Franche-Comté, and Centre d’art Le Lait, with the support from Villa Albertine. An accompanying archival exhibition contextualizes the work and will be on display at the performance site. The resulting film documentation created during the performance will join the touring exhibition Lucinda Childs — Between Prediction and Speculation (2026).
The season will close out with Claire Chase ’s 12th yearly iteration of Density 2036, a 24-year commissioning project launched in 2013 to create a new body of flute repertory leading up to the 100th anniversary of Edgard Varèse’s landmark 1936 flute solo, Density 21.5. Density 2036, part xii (December 11–12, at The Kitchen at Westbeth) features the world premiere of Elwha!, a composition for multi-channel environmental sound and solo flute collaboratively created by Annea Lockwood and Chase working with the ecological and cultural history of the Elwha River. The work honors the river’s recovery following the removal of two dams and celebrates resilience and renewal. Organized by Matthew Lyons, Curator, this installment continues the series’ exploration of experimental sound and performance.
Fall 2025 Programming Schedule
Dance and Process: Ayano Elson, Niala, Stacy Lynn Smith Site: The Kitchen at Westbeth Performances: September 18–20, 2025, Time TBA Tickets: Sliding scale; $10-30
Will Rawls: [siccer] Site: The Kitchen at Westbeth Exhibition : October 16–November 22, 2025 Gallery hours: Wednesday–Saturday, 12–6pm, Free Performances at Performance Space New York: November 20-22, 2025, 7:30pm
Lucinda Childs: Street Dance (1964–2025) Site: TBA Performances: November 21–23, 2025, 11am and 12pm daily Gallery hours: TBA
Claire Chase: Density 2036, part xii with Annea Lockwood Site: The Kitchen at Westbeth Performances: December 11–12, 2025, Time TBA Tickets: Sliding scale; $10-30
Funding Support and Credits The Kitchen’s programs are made possible in part with support from The Kitchen’s Board of Directors, The Kitchen Global Council, Leadership Fund, and the Director’s Council, as well as through generous support from The Amphion Foundation, Inc., Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Cowles Charitable Trust, Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Ford Foundation, Howard Gilman Foundation, The Harkness Foundation for Dance, Marta Heflin Foundation, The New York Community Trust, Jerome Robbins Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, and in part by public funds from the Manhattan Borough President, the National Endowment for the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. The Kitchen acknowledges the generous support provided by the Collaborative Arts Network New York (CANNY). As a coalition of small to mid-sized multidisciplinary arts organizations, CANNY is committed to strengthening the infrastructure of arts nonprofits throughout New York.