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Boston Center for the Arts

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Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) is a not-for-profit performing and visual arts complex that support
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10/20/2026

Join us for a free preview of The Head is not the Star of the Body on Tuesday, November 10 at 7 PM in Martin Hall at BCA’s Calderwood Pavilion.

Created by BCA Resident Dancemaker Cassie Wang, this evening-length choreographic work blends contemporary dance, video art, and music by Big Thief to explore longing, identity, and relational distance.

Supported in part by a New England States Touring (NEST) Grant from New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), the work will be developed at BCA before traveling to Mechanics’ Hall in Portland, Maine, bringing a Boston-based artist’s work to audiences across New England.

🎟️ Learn more and find tickets for Mechanics’ Hall performances through the link in our bio.

📸 Olivia Moon (olivia moon photography

10/19/2026

SOFT COLLAPSE: ARTIST TALK
Join us this Friday Oct. 23 for an artist talk featuring bca studio residents Shima Taj Bakhsh in conversation with Mark deGenia Paz for an engaging evening of art, dialogue, and exchange.

🕊️RSVP is required to attend, please email [email protected] to secure your spot. We look forward to seeing you there!

⏰ Friday, October 23 | 6–7:30 PM
📍BCA Mills Gallery | 551 Tremont St, Boston

10/08/2026

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the opening of Impenetrable Landscapes by Alice Miceli in the Mills Gallery and Soft Collapse by BCA studio resident Shima Taj Bakhsh in the project room 🖤

Impenetrable Landscapes & Soft Collapse are on view now through December 12, 2026.

📍Mills Gallery | 551 Tremont St.
⏱️ Wed- Sat | 3-8 PM

Photos by: Melissa Blackall Melissa Blackall

10/07/2026

BCA Artistic Director Shey Rivera Ríos will lead a round table and workshop with arts and culture leaders from across the country for “Defending Arts as Civic Infrastructure,” a session at the 2026 Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) Conference in Memphis.

The session will explore the role of arts and culture as essential civic infrastructure and examine how funders, cultural organizations, and community leaders can advocate for the resources and policies that allow artists and communities to thrive.

📍 Halloran Center for Performing Arts & Education, Memphis, TN
📅 Tuesday, October 20, 2026
⏰ 4–5:30 PM

Shey will be joined by (BCA studio resident) Ngoc-Tran Vu of Tran Vu Arts and Boston Peoples Budget Alliance, Rocío Aranda-Alvarado of Ford Foundation, Jaren Bonillo of First Peoples Fund, and Carlton Turner of Mississippi Center for Cultural Production.

Learn more about the 2026 GIA Conference at Grantmakers in the Arts

09/24/2026

Join us TOMORROW for the opening reception of Alice Miceli: Impenetrable Landscapes at the Mills Gallery from 6–9pm.

Brazilian photographer Alice Miceli’s (Alice Miceli) Impenetrable Landscapes, asks how we might approach genocide, environmental disasters, and the deadly aftermath of landmine warfare—and how we might make their underlying conditions perceptible without recapitulating their originary logic.

Opening the same night in the Project Room is Soft Collapse by BCA studio resident Shima Taj Bakhsh (Shim T). Centered on Kaboutar (کبوتر), the Persian word for pigeon, the project follows a shifting persona moving between biographical research, history, and fiction.

▪️On view: Sept. 25–Dec. 12, 2026.
▪️Opening Reception: Fri., Sept. 25 | 6–9pm
📍BCA Mills Gallery | 539 Tremont St.

🔗Visit the link in bio to RSVP + learn more.

09/22/2026

We are excited to announce our 2026-2027 Dancemakers Resident: DeAnna Pellecchia 🎉

DeAnna Pellecchia is an interdisciplinary artist, dancer, choreographer, and founder and artistic director of KAIROS Dance Theater. For more than twenty-five years, she has created visceral, immersive performance worlds that invite audiences into time-bending truths, connecting the immediate to the infinite, the ancestral, and the universal. Defined by rigorous physicality, fearless embodiment, and emotional vulnerability, her interdisciplinary works unfold as nonlinear story mosaics, weaving together dance, light, live music, visual art, memory, and myth. Her work has been commissioned and presented by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Busan Biennale, and cultural institutions nationally and internationally.

DeAnna’s Dancemakers project, MotherLoad, is a new interdisciplinary work by KAIROS Dance Theater exploring the maternal as a source of intelligence, ferocity, continuity, and social architecture. Dancers and live musicians inhabit a visceral world of movement, music, memory, tenderness, and vulnerability, asking what becomes possible when care is recognized as power.

The Boston Dancemakers Residency is Boston’s most comprehensive dance-focused residency, designed to support new work from conception to performance. Two choreographers selected for this opportunity receive customized support for research, experimentation, production and marketing, business practices, artistic risk-taking, and growth within the dance industry.

Head to bostonarts.org for more information💫

09/22/2026

We are excited to announce our 2026-2027 Dancemakers Resident: Ashton “Stiggity Stackz” Lites 🎉

Ashton “Stiggity Stackz” Lites is a Boston-based freestyle dancer, choreographer, educator, DJ, and cultural organizer. A first-generation Boston Krump dancer, Ashton has competed internationally, becoming a champion in Tokyo, a Summer Dance Forever Top 12 finalist in Amsterdam, and a two-time Red Bull Dance Your Style national finalist. He is the Founder and Executive Director of StiggityStackz Worldwide Inc., presenting programs including Stackin’ Stylez, Stack The City, and It St(ARTS) in the Park. Ashton has also served as Hip Hop faculty at Emerson College, a Harvard DanceMaker artist-in-residence, and a Boston Artist-in-Residence, creating welcoming spaces rooted in movement, culture, confidence, and community.

Ashton’s Dancemakers project, Stackin’ Stylez: Crossfader, explores whether regional Black vernacular dance forms can move between the battle arena and the theater without losing their identity. Using Bounce, Rock, Footwork, Isolation, and Musicality as a framework, the work brings distinct movement languages into conversation while preserving the spontaneity, individuality, cultural integrity, and community exchange at the heart of freestyle.

The Boston Dancemakers Residency is Boston’s most comprehensive dance-focused residency, designed to support new work from conception to performance. Two choreographers selected for this opportunity receive customized support for research, experimentation, production and marketing, business practices, artistic risk-taking, and growth within the dance industry.

Head to bostonarts.org for more information💫

09/22/2026

We are excited to announce our 2026-2027 Dance Lab Resident: Emily Beattie✨

Emily Beattie is a contemporary dance artist based in Somerville, MA. Drawing from her rural Southern roots, she uses long-winded stories and magical realism to engage with critique through her dance theater works. Her immersive performances weave together nature and speculative futures, creating tableaus where performers and audiences can meet somewhere anew. Her entanglements with technology in performance reflect her time spent in the Northeast, while her embodied practice pursues an alchemy of ferocity, ancestral lineage, and heart-driven movement.

Emily’s Dance Lab project, See | Be Seen, is an immersive dance theater performance experience that lays bare the constructs placed upon female-presenting bodies in performance by offering audiences the opposite: a radically restful wonderland. Through magical realism and light play, See | Be Seen creates space for both critique and collective remedy, inviting audiences to experience a different way of seeing, being seen, and inhabiting performance.

The Dance Lab at Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) offers resources for dance-based artists to research, expand, and rebuild work at varying stages of development. Over a seven-month period, two dance-based artists receive support for research, development, rehearsal, outreach, and mentorship, with resources tailored to each dancemaker and their artistic journey.

Head to bostonarts.org for more information.

09/22/2026

We are excited to announce one of our 2026-2027 Dance Lab Resident: Carmen S. Rizzo ✨

Carmen S. Rizzo is a dance artist, educator, fitness instructor, social media manager, and administrator from São Paulo, Brazil. She graduated from the professional training program at Escola de Dança de São Paulo and from Manhattanville University with degrees in Dance and Business, summa cm laude. Inspired by scientific perspectives on universal human experiences, Carmen creates collaborative choreography that highlights dancers’ abilities and expressive voices while bridging the gap between science and art. Her work has been featured in film and dance festivals and across the East Coast, with a focus on bringing greater diversity into dance and creating work that feels richer and more relatable.

Carmen’s Dance Lab project explores sand as a metaphor for human trajectories and stories: “Sand has been keeping track of time since before we knew what time was. Through different weather and landscapes, every grain is shaped by experience, as are we.” This contemporary dance work examines the weight and weightlessness of sand, using its movement and transformation to explore the ways our own experiences shape us over time.

The Dance Lab at Boston Center for the Arts (BCA) offers resources for dance-based artists to research, expand, and rebuild work at varying stages of development. Over a seven-month period, two dance-based artists receive support for research, development, rehearsal, outreach, and mentorship, with resources tailored to each dancemaker and their artistic journey.

Head to bostonarts.org for more information.

09/19/2026

WERE OPEN FOR SOUTH END OPEN STUDIOS TODAY AND TOMORROW 11 AM - 6 PM 🥳💐💛

📍551 TREMONT ST

Address

539 Tremont Street
Boston, MA
02116

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Telephone

+16174265000

Website

http://www.bostonarts.org/

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