New Works Review: What Young Choreographers Are Getting Right

Julia Wagner · 2026-09-17

I walked into the theater expecting the usual showcase — a few earnest pieces, some technical polish, maybe one standout. What I got was something closer to a jolt. *New Works* isn't just a platform for emerging talent. It's a look at where dance is actually heading, and the people steering it are younger than you'd think. ### The Energy in the Room There's a particular kind of electricity when choreographers are still figuring out their voice. Nothing feels safe. Every transition is a risk. That rawness can go either way, but here it mostly landed. The dancers committed hard, and you could feel the audience leaning in instead of checking their phones. A lot of that comes down to pacing. Young choreographers often overstuff their pieces — too many ideas, too little breathing room. The best works in this program did the opposite. They trusted silence. They let a single gesture sit long enough to mean something. ### What Stood Out - **Use of space:** Several pieces treated the stage like a landscape, not a box. Dancers drifted into corners you'd normally ignore. - **Music choices:** Less reliance on sweeping orchestral scores. More ambient textures, live percussion, even silence. - **Collaboration:** You could tell when a choreographer actually listened to their dancers. Those pieces breathed differently. If you run a studio or teach classes, this is worth paying attention to. The vocabulary your students are absorbing right now is being rewritten by choreographers who grew up with YouTube, TikTok, and a completely different sense of what "watching dance" means. ### A Note for Studio Owners and Teachers Here's the thing — a lot of us teach the way we were taught. That's comfortable, but it's also how studios get stuck. *New Works* reminded me that technique and curiosity aren't opposites. You can drill a clean pirouette and still ask a student, "What does this movement mean to you?" > "The choreographers who moved me most weren't the most technically polished. They were the ones who knew exactly what they wanted to say — and trusted their dancers to say it." That's a lesson worth carrying back into the studio. It doesn't require a bigger budget or a fancier space. It requires asking better questions. ### The Young(ish) Perspective I say "young(ish)" because I'm not 22 anymore, and neither are a lot of the people making work in this space. But there's a mindset that stays young: willingness to fail in public, to try something that might not land, to let a piece be weird before it's good. *New Works* gave me that feeling back. Not because everything was brilliant — it wasn't — but because nothing felt like it was playing it safe. And honestly? That's the energy I want in my own classes, in my own choreography, and in the studios I walk into next season. If you get the chance to see a program like this in your city, go. Bring your students. Bring a notebook. You'll leave with more questions than answers, and that's exactly the point.