Firebird Reborn: Dance Theatre of Harlem

Firebird Reborn: Dance Theatre of Harlem and Gateways Festival Orchestra Ignite a Live-Orchestra Season at City Center

Dance Theatre of Harlem returns to New York City Center April 16–19, 2026, with its signature Firebird newly supercharged by a live performance of Stravinsky’s score from the Gateways Festival Orchestra, a 58-member ensemble of Black classical musicians. The pairing of these two legacy institutions—DTH, founded in 1969 by Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook, and Gateways, established in 1993 by Armenta Hummings Dumisani—turns a canonical ballet into an act of cultural re-centering, asking who gets to embody and interpret the classics.

The orchestra will be led by conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson on April 16, 18, and 19, with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and former DTH music director Tania León on the podium for the Vision Gala on April 17. Across the run, Firebird, choreographed by John Taras, anchors mixed bills that showcase the company’s range: William Forsythe’s Blake Works IV (The Barre Project) and The Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude, Jodie Gates’s Passage of Being, and Robert Garland’s New Bach, Higher Ground, and Nyman String Quartet No. 2. Themed evenings—a Dance Community Night, a Divine Nine/HBCU Night open to all, and a family-oriented “Meet the Ballerina” matinee—underscore how intentionally DTH situates ballet within specific communities.

The Vision Gala doubles as both a fundraiser and cultural summit, honoring choreographer and creative director Fatima Robinson with the Arthur Mitchell Vision Award and media executive and philanthropist Scott Mills with the Virtuoso Award. 

They join a lineage of honorees including Darren Walker, Debbie Allen, Misty Copeland, and Jessye Norman, artists and leaders who have reshaped access to the arts. After a 6:30 p.m. performance at City Center, the celebration shifts to the Ziegfeld Ballroom for dinner and dancing, with DJ D-Nice and Kenny Burns steering the night and a host committee that spans art, fashion, film, and criticism.

Behind the scenes, a dense network of foundations, corporations, and public agencies underwrites DTH’s blend of high artistry and social mission, from major arts philanthropies to New York’s city and state cultural councils and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Gateways, meanwhile, continues its own work of affirming Black classical musicians through festivals, residencies, and broadcasts that insist their contributions are central, not peripheral, to the tradition. Together in Firebird, these two institutions offer a vision of the canon not as a fixed inheritance, but as something that can be reclaimed and reorchestrated in real time.