esperanza spalding in collaboration with dancer, theater and filmmaker Kayla Farrish, presents an evening of new dance and music – crafted live and in real time.  

Growing from spalding’s years of study and experimentation around how to re-merge “jazz” music & dance, and Farrish’s multi-disciplinary work of transforming feeling, story, and humanity through dance, this is a unique first public sharing of their creative collaboration.

The ensemble of three musicians and three dancers has been in workshop throughout 2026, developing shared grammar and vocabulary to musically and movementally compose a story, engage in improvisational dialogue, and translate the vibrant energies, sensations, and ideas coursing between, within, and around them. Alchemizing and manifesting what could be, through and with one another…

Free | August 8, 7pm | Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park | Let us know your attending! RSVP here.

Presented by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in partnership with Battery Park City Authority as part of the 2026 River To River Festival.

PLEASE NOTE: No assigned seating, first come, first served in the amphitheater seating. Lawn chairs and blankets are permitted on the Wagner lawn. Patrons may be asked to make room to allow for more guests. Food and beverage will be available for purchase, picnics are allowed.

esperanza spalding is an eaabibacliitoti* artist, trained and  initiated in the North American jazz lineage and tradition. Her  work interweaves various combinations of instrumental music,  improvisation, singing, composition, poetry, dance, therapeutic  research, storytelling, teaching, restorative urban land & artist sanctuary custodianship, and growing in love as a daughter,  sister, cousin, niece, auntie, great-auntie, friend. 

She founded and serves as co-director of Prismid Sanctuary, a  non-profit that creates and stewards restorative artist residency &  workshop space in Portland, Oregon (Prismid.org). 

  With her dance project “Off Brand gOdds” and the Songwrights  Apothecary Lab she leads multi-week performances, workshops,  teaching, and therapeutic-arts research residencies. She is a  2024 recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation Artist Award and a  2016 Ford Foundation “Art of Change” Fellow. 

Kayla Farrish is a Black American Director merging dance-theater, filmmaking, narrative, and sound score. Her commissions include Limon Dance Company, Whim W’him, Ririe Woodbury, Armstrong Now!, Danspace, Little Island, Harlem Stage, American Dance Festival and beyond. She creates live works, films, site-specific/immersive pieces, and collaborations with musicians such as esperanza spalding, Trixie Whitley, Moor Mother, and Melanie Charles. Presenting spaces include Lincoln Center, Park Avenue Armory, Symphony Space, and National Sawdust, Joyce Theater, among receiving support from Works & Process, Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective, Baryshnikov Arts, La Mama Theater, and others.

She received the Sundance Uprise Grant for Emerging BIPOC Directors, Bessie Awards for December 8th and NYLA’s “Motherboard Suite”, New York Times Top 2021 Dance Performances “Roster” and “Breakout Star.” She is a recipient of the Harkness Promise Award for 2022. She premiered reimagined archival work for Limon at Joyce Theater (2024). She toured “Put Away the Fire, dear” supported by NEFA National Dance Project. She received Watermill Center’s Baroness Nina Von Maltzahn Fellowship and the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation Choreographer Award (2023).  She is a 2025 CUNY Dance Initiative Artist, NYFA/NYSCA Choreography Fellow, 2026 NY Support for Artists Grantee, and Danse Mirage Foundation Choreography commissioned artist.

*European-African ancestored being influenced by American cultures living in Indigenous Territories of Turtle Island

Funding for esperanza spalding: In Concert is provided by Battery Park City Authority.  

Funding for the River To River Festival is provided by The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Howard Gilman Foundation, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, and The Robert Lehman Foundation.  River To River is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Photos by Rob Lewis.