If New York needed an excuse to hit the streets, this is it. Next month, the city’s biggest dance celebration is back, and it’s set to hit a major milestone while it’s at it.
The New York Dance Parade will return on Saturday, May 16, for its 20th anniversary, bringing more than 10,000 dancers and over 100 styles of dance to the streets of Manhattan. Kicking off around 11:45 am at West 17th Street and Sixth Avenue, the procession will move downtown before culminating in a full-blown dance festival in Tompkins Square Park.
If you’ve never stumbled into it before, it’s a moving, high-energy mix of global dance traditions, everything from African and South American styles to voguing, breaking, house, salsa and swing, plus a combo of student performers and professional companies all sharing the same stretch of pavement.
This year’s edition is centered around an anniversary theme, “The Beat Goes On,” with a lineup of grand marshals that showcases how wide the dance world really is. Honorees include Joan Myers Brown, a force in American concert dance; DJ and producer Timmy Regisford, a key figure in New York City’s house music scene; Christine Jowers, founder of The Dance Enthusiast; and Jeff Selby, creator of New Style Hustle, a genre that’s become global.
Once the last dancers hit the East Village, things shift into festival mode. From 3 pm to 7 pm, Tompkins Square Park turns into a dance playground, with performances across multiple stages, a teaching stage for anyone ready to jump in and a dance party area powered by DJs.
And while it’s easy to show up for the spectacle, the event has always had a bigger mission baked in. The nonprofit behind it, Dance Parade New York, has spent years advocating for dance as a protected form of expression. It was behind helping overturn the city’s long-criticized Cabaret Law in 2017 and pushing for broader reforms around where and how New Yorkers can dance today.
It’s a party, for sure, but it’s also a reminder that in New York, even joy can be a little bit political.