Global Dance Festival Unveils World Premiere Program Spotlighting Multinational Troupes
New works from Canada, France, Japan and Brazil will debut August 4 at the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater, underscoring a 27 % surge in international co-commissioning deals across North America.
Vail, Colo. – November 20, 2025 — The Vail Dance Festival today announced the lineup for “NOW: Premieres 2025,” a one-night-only program that will introduce eight brand-new works created by choreographers from five countries and performed by dancers representing 14 nations. The August 4 performance marks the largest single-evening slate of world premieres in the festival’s 37-year history and caps a season that has seen record demand for cross-border collaborations.
According to the National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. dance organizations presented 42 % more multinational co-productions in 2024 than in 2019, a trajectory that festival director Damian Woetzel attributes to post-pandemic digital scouting and improved touring visas. “Choreographers are no longer waiting for a biennial to meet—they meet on Zoom, co-write grants overnight and share production costs across three currencies,” Woetzel said. A 2024 study by the International Federation of Arts Councils further shows that festivals offering world premieres generate 2.3 times the earned revenue of repertory-only events .
The 2025 program opens with “Pendulum”, a septet by Tokyo-based choreographer Kaori Iwashita that fuses Butoh suspension technique with Brazilian samba footwork; the cast includes dancers from São Paulo’s Companhia de Danças and Kyoto’s Monochrome Collective. Canadian tap star Kimberly “K Star” Fletcher follows with “Cipher”, a percussive work that loops live beat-boxing through loop-station pedals built by Parisian sound-engineering start-up MuzeLab. Paris Opera Ballet étoiles Hannah O’Neill and Hugo Marchand then premiere “Corona”, a neoclassical duet set to Caroline Shaw’s newly commissioned string quartet, co-produced with France’s Chaillot – Théâtre national de la Danse.
Additional premieres include “Red Clay” by American Ballet Theatre principal Calvin Royal III (a meditation on Alabama soil and African diaspora identity), “Glass jaw” by Mexico City–based Ja Collective that pairs lucha-libre movement with contemporary floor work, and “Recessive” by New York City Ballet resident choreographer Justin Peck, scored by Grammy-winning indie guitarist Phoebe Bridgers. Bridgers’ participation continues the festival’s strategy of pairing classical companies with pop collaborators—an approach that grew paid attendance 18 % last summer.
Tickets for NOW: Premieres range from $45 lawn seats to $220 amphitheater boxes, with 200 no-cost seats reserved for Eagle County students. A livestream on the festival’s YouTube channel is expected to exceed last year’s 42,000 unique viewers, 62 % of whom watched outside the United States. “Audiences don’t just want to see something first; they want to be part of a global conversation the minute the curtain falls,” Woetzel noted.
Economic impact projections prepared by the Vail Valley Partnership estimate that out-of-state visitors attending the premiere night will inject $3.1 million into local lodging, dining and retail—an 11 % increase over 2024. The festival itself operates on a $7.8 million budget, underwritten 55 % by private donors, 24 % by corporate sponsors (including first-time partner Delta Air Lines) and 21 % by earned income. “We designed this evening as a prototype for how midsize festivals can punch above their weight in the international market,” Woetzel added.
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“Premieres are risk capital, but the data say they’re also the fastest way to build brand equity,” Woetzel said. “When a teenager in Buenos Aires can watch a Vail world debut on her phone that same night, geography stops being a constraint and starts becoming content.”
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