Tony Award winner Beth Leavel (The Drowsy Chaperone, Lempicka) hosts the 2024 Fire Island Dance Festival beginning July 19 at Fire Island Pines. The weekend of dance and celebration benefits Dancers Responding to AIDS, a program within Broadway Cares.

The festival includes numerous performances, celebrating established and emerging dance companies. This year's choreographers include Gilbert Bolden III, a New York City Ballet soloist. Bolden's piece will be performed by Bolden, India Bradley, Jules Mabie, and Mira Nadon, who is the first Asian American principal dancer in New York City Ballet history. 

Choreographer Keerati Jinakunwipha, the first Asian American woman to be commissioned to choreograph for New York City Ballet, is presenting a world premiere at the festival. Featured dancers include Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's Chalvar Monteiro. The work is presented in collaboration with Asbury Park Dance Festival. 

Ingrid Silva, co-founder of Blacks in Ballet, is presenting a world premiere quartet performed by Jonathan Batista (a principal at Pacific Northwest Ballet), Nayara Lopes (a principal at Philadelphia Ballet), and Dylan Santos. 

The Paul Taylor Dance Company is also being featured, sharing an excerpt from resident choreographer Lauren Lovette's all-male work Echo.

Last year's festival, which was hosted by Tony and Olivier winner Alan Cumming, raised record-breaking funds, a total of $700,572. 

Since its debut in 1995, Fire Island Dance Festival has raised more than $8.4 million to help provide medication, nutritious meals, counseling, and emergency financial assistance to those in need in all 50 states, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico.

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