Dance Out East Returns With New Works at The Church, Guild Hall and The Watermill Center

The second annual Dance Out East festival will return January 10 and 11, 2026, presenting three new dance works developed during weeklong creative residencies at The Church in Sag Harbor, Guild Hall in East Hampton and The Watermill Center in Water Mill, all in partnership with Works & Process.

The festival opens on Saturday, January 10, at The Church, located at 48 Madison Street in Sag Harbor, with the premiere “The Lineage Project,” a new duet created for dancers Kristine Bendul and Abdiel and choreographed by Ron De Jesús. The public showing will take place from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 ($22.50 members) available at thechurchsagharbor.org.

Bendul and Abdiel, known for their Broadway, ballet and concert dance careers as well as their gender-neutral ballroom partnering performed in heels by both dancers, will spend the week of January 4 to 10 in residency at The Church. During the residency, De Jesús will blend Adagio partnering with contemporary movement to create a new work set to “Black Cream” by The Harold Wheeler Consort (1975). The piece reimagines classic Adagio patterns through a modern lens, exploring progressive lifts, transitions and expressive possibilities shaped by the dancers’ shared approach to lead-and-follow exchange.

Bendul and Abdiel bring to the project an extensive partnership that spans appearances at Carnegie Hall; Broadway’s Music Box Theatre; the Canada Salsa and Bachata Congress; and Buglisi Dance Theatre. They became Disco America’s first-place champions in the Professional Dance-Off Division with their Hustle choreography and made history as the first professional ballroom duo in the United States to compete in DanceSport as a gender-neutral pair. Their work “The Color Iz,” presented at the Stonewall Inn for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, received critical praise from Broadway World. They have been supported by the NYFA City Artist Corps, Bridge Street Theatre, and multiple Works & Process residencies, and they are featured in the upcoming documentary “Follow Lead Love” by Emmy-nominated director Brian Thomas.

Choreographer Ron De Jesús, who created “The Lineage Project,” is an assistant professor in the Department of Musical Theatre at the University of Michigan and a former leading dancer with Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, where he spent 17 seasons. De Jesús also performed with Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater, Joseph Holmes Dance Theater and Chicago Repertory Dance Ensemble. He originated a role in Twyla Tharp and Billy Joel’s musical “Movin’ Out” on Broadway. He has won the New York Musical Theater Festival Award for Excellence in Choreography and the Chicago Music & Dance Alliance Award for Best Choreographer, and has created works for stage, film, television and numerous dance companies nationwide.

Dance Out East continues on Saturday, January 10, at 7 p.m. at Guild Hall, located at 158 Main Street in East Hampton, with Naomi Funaki’s in-process showing of her new evening-length tap work “Ikigai.” Tickets are $25 at guildhall.org.

Funaki, a 2023 Princess Grace Award recipient; a 2024 Dance Magazine “25 to Watch”; a 92NY Artist-in-Residence; and a 2025 Asian American Arts Alliance Jadin Wong Fellow, will spend January 3 to 11 in a Works & Process Tino and Rajika Puri Creative Residency at Guild Hall. “Ikigai,” which will premiere March 8 with Works & Process at the Guggenheim as part of the Uptown Rhythm Dance Festival, reflects on the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the artist’s personal memories. Through rhythm, live music, and narrative, Funaki explores themes of resilience, memory and connection. The January 10 program will combine performance and discussion to shed light on the work’s development and the ideas informing its evolution.

“Ikigai” was commissioned and created with support from the Works & Process Tino and Rajika Puri Creative Residency, The Joyce Theater Foundation’s Creative Residencies Program made possible by lead funding from TD Charitable Foundation, and further residencies at 92NY, the CUNY Dance Initiative at Hunter College, Guild Hall of East Hampton and the Asian American Arts Alliance Jadin Wong Fellowship.

The festival concludes Sunday, January 11, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at The Watermill Center, located at 39 Watermill Towd Road in Water Mill, with “Palladium Nights” by the collective "Sekou McMiller + Friends" which is led by the esteemed choreographer, Sekou McMiller, and comprises a talented ensemble of seasoned professional dancers, musicians, composers and club/street performers. Tickets are $28, available at watermillcenter.org.

“Palladium Nights” is an evening-length choreographic work that honors the cultural and artistic legacy of New York’s historic Palladium Ballroom of the 1940s to 1960s, a space in which Afro-Latin and African American communities shaped the foundations of modern Salsa and Mambo dance. The work celebrates the Palladium as a site of innovation, identity and social movement while engaging its ongoing influence on contemporary dance and culture. The presentation at The Watermill Center is dedicated to the memory of Robert Wilson and Michéle Pesner, whose work advanced global and local cultural development.

Launched in 2025, Dance Out East celebrates dance on the East End, supports artists through fully funded residencies and offers audiences rare insight into the creation of new choreography that will continue development within the Works & Process dance festivals at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Each program is a culmination of a weeklong creative residency, offering audiences the earliest opportunity to view new dance works before they continue development through Works & Process and later appear in the organization’s 2026 dance festivals at the Guggenheim Museum.

Works & Process is a nonprofit performing arts organization championing artists and their creative process from studio to stage through fully funded residencies, artist discussions, in-process showings, and presentations at the Guggenheim Museum and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The organization supports more than two dozen residencies annually across a network of partners in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Vermont. For more information about Dance Out East, visit danceouteast.org.