If New York needed an excuse to hit the streets, this is it. Next month, the city\u2019s biggest dance celebration is back, and it\u2019s set to hit a major milestone while it\u2019s at it.<\/p>\n
The New York Dance Parade<\/a> 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve never stumbled into it before, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n This year\u2019s edition is centered around an anniversary theme, \u201cThe Beat Goes On,\u201d 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\u2019s house music scene; Christine Jowers, founder of The Dance Enthusiast; and Jeff Selby, creator of New Style Hustle, a genre that\u2019s become global.<\/p>\n Once the last dancers hit the East Village<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n And while it\u2019s 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\u2019s long-criticized Cabaret Law in 2017<\/a> and pushing for broader reforms around where and how New Yorkers can dance today.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a party, for sure, but it\u2019s also a reminder that in New York, even joy can be a little bit political.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If New York needed an excuse to hit the streets, this is it. Next month, the city\u2019s biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8122,9,8123,56,63,65,64,905],"class_list":{"0":"post-191222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-categories-theater","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-news-theater-performance","11":"tag-ny","12":"tag-nyc","13":"tag-nyc-headlines","14":"tag-nyc-news","15":"tag-theater"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}