10 Best Art, Dance, Theater, and Music Events in August 2021
Clear your calendar, because this month’s cultural programming is truly too good to miss. From a slew of outdoor dance festivals featuring performances by the American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey, Dance Theatre of Harlem, and more to livestream concerts headlined by St. Vincent and Saweetie, the lineup is stacked with exciting events that will remind you what enjoying summer is all about. If an art exhibition is more your pace, enjoy diving into the work of Judy Chicago or Rashid Johnson, or tap into your inner film buff and enjoy a free monthlong festival of short films from around the world.
1. Vail Dance Festival
August 1-9
Making its triumphant in-person return after a year of digital-only programming, Colorado’s Vail Dance Festival will feature performances by this year’s artist-in-residence, American Ballet Theatre principal Calvin Royal III, and company-in-residence, the Philadelphia contemporary company BalletX. Other highlights will include an evening with the New York City Ballet’s touring arm, Moves, as well as new works by NYCB principal Tiler Peck and Alvin Ailey resident choreographer Jamar Roberts.
Erin BaianoABT’s Calvin Royal III
2. Marquee TV Summer Shorts Festival
August 1-31
The performing arts streaming service Marquee TV’s second annual Summer Shorts Festival will offer 30 short films from the worlds of opera, theater, music, and dance available on demand for free during the month of August. Highlights include seven LA Opera clips; five shorts from the 2020 Platform Presents Playwright’s Prize; three classical recordings by Orchestra of the Age of the Enlightenment inspired by famous music videos, and highlights from the San Francisco Dance Film Festival.
Courtesy of Marquee TVSan Francisco Dance Film Festival’s “Dear Black Girls”
3. St. Vincent Livestream Concert
August 4
Airing exclusively via the premium digital platform Moment House at 6 p.m. PDT (and available after on demand), Down and Out Downtown, St. Vincent’s virtual concert debut, will feature the live premieres of several tracks from Annie Clark’s recently released album, Daddy’s Home, as well as new arrangements of hits and deep cuts from throughout her illustrious career. With instrumentals from Clarke’s accompanying Down and Out Downtown Band, the production, directed by Portlandia’s Bill Benz, will take visual inspiration from ’70s glamour and grit, as indicated by the event’s trailer.
Courtesy of St. Vincent
4. “Titian: Women Myth Power” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Opening August 12
The traveling international exhibition Titian: Women, Myth & Power makes its final stop at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum this month. Co-organized by the National Gallery, London and Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, the show bringing together Titian’s series of mythological paintings—The Rape of Europa, Perseus and Andromeda, Danaë, Venus and Adonis, Diana and Actaeon, Diana and Callisto—for the first time in more than four centuries. The Gardner Museum has also invited contemporary artists Barbara Kruger and Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley to create new works that address questions of gender, power, and sexual violence represented in the Renaissance master’s paintings.
Courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner MuseumBarbara Kruger’s Body Language, 2021. Artist rendering.
5. Can’t Wait Live: A Concert for Jobs, Climate & Care Livestream
August 13
Broadcasting live from Philadelphia’s Mann Center for the Performing Arts at 4:30 p.m. ET, this stacked event will feature artists and speakers who will call on Congress to pass a legislative package that invests in jobs, climate, housing, and immigration. In between performances by artists including Saweetie, Ne-Yo, and Wyclef Jean, activists and political figures will take to the stage to address the critical need for such legislation coming off a year of historic suffering. Register for free tickets, or catch the livestream via the Working Families YouTube and Facebook pages.
Rich Fury/Getty ImagesSaweetie
6. NYC Homecoming Week Concerts
August 16, 17, 19, 20, 21
Free tickets (and VIP tickets) are now available for the We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert to be held on Central Park’s Great Lawn on August 21 at 5 p.m. ET, and livestreamed on CNN. Co-produced by Clive Davis and Live Nation, the mega concert celebrating New York’s resilience features the lineup of all lineups with Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Patti Smith, Jennifer Hudson, LL Cool J, Elvis Costello, Earth, Wind and Fire, Wyclef Jean—and many more. Get your vaccination card ready, because the Homecoming festivities kick off early with a musical tailgate of sorts: The It’s Time for Hip Hop in NYC concert series features shows in the Bronx, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens all week long.
Taylor Hill/Getty ImagesBruce Springsteen
7. BAAND Together Dance Festival at Lincoln Center
August 17-21
For the first time ever, five of New York’s most renowned dance companies will come together and share the spotlight for the BAAND Together Dance Festival as part of Restart Stages, the new outdoor performing arts center constructed on the Lincoln Center campus to champion the city’s cultural and economic revival. Each night, a lineup featuring works from Ballet Hispánico, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem will be presented, with choreography from dance heavyweights including Justin Peck, Alvin Ailey, Kyle Abraham, and Jessica Lang. Presented by Chanel, the festival is free to the public; assigned seats for each evening will be made available through a TodayTix lottery.
Kent BeckerDance Theatre of Harlem’s Lindsey Donnell in Change
8. Rashid Johnson: The Hikers at Storm King Art Center
Opening August 20-21
Martha Graham Dance Company members Lloyd Knight and Leslie Andrea Williams will perform The Hikers, a dance work conceived of by artist Rashid Johnson and choreographer Claudia Schreier in a series of evening performances at Storm King Art Center. The ballet, which follows the path of two solo hikers, will activate Johnson’s sculpture The Crisis (2019), a 16-foot-tall yellow steel sculpture the artist placed within a field of native grasses.
Courtesy of Storm KingRashid Johnson and Claudia Schreier’s The Hikers
9. “Judy Chicago: A Retrospective” at the de Young Museum
Opening August 28
Opening in conjunction with the 100th anniversary of women’s right to vote across the United States, San Francisco’s de Young museum will host a retrospective of the pioneering feminist artist Judy Chicago, whose monumental installation work The Dinner Party (1974-79) celebrates 998 women who shaped history. Honoring Chicago’s six-decade-plus career, the shows spans her early engagement with the Light and Space movement in the 1960s and her current work focused on climate change, and features 130 paintings, prints, drawings, and ceramic sculptures.
© JUDY CHICAGO/ARTISTS RIGHTS SOCIETY (ARS), NEW YORK, PHOTOGRAPH © DONALD WOODMAN/ARS, NEW YORK, IMAGE PROVIDED COURTESY THE FINE ARTS MUSEUMS OF SAN FRANCISCO;Judy Chicago’s Through the Flower 2, 1973
10. Kaatsbaan Cultural Park Summer Festival
August 28-29
On the heels of its spring festival, which included an array of culinary panels, musical performances, and dance masterpieces, Kaatsbaan Cultural Park presents an equally enriching summer edition across three weekends in August and September on its 153-acre Hudson Valley artists’ sanctuary. The opening weekend will feature three new dance works by rising choreographic talents Lauren Lovette, Gemma Bond, and Claire Davison (the later promises “elements of clowning, dance, slapstick, juggling and aerial dance” performed to Venezuelan folk music), as well as a solo recital by pianist Cecile Licad. The #EndlessSummer vibes continue September 4-5 and 11-12 with a free weekend of western swing music, art, and picnicking; a screening of the documentary In Balanchine's Classroom in partnership with the Woodstock Film Festival; and an end-of-summer feast prepared by chefs JuanMa Calderón and Maria Rondeau of Esmeralda and Celeste.
Holly HarkinsHunter Noack and Coral Dolphin
Ariana Marsh is Harper Bazaar’s senior features editor. Working across print and digital, she covers the arts, culture, fashion, literature, and entertainment—and a bit of everything in between.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7qa3RqZyrq5KWx6Kt0WeaqKVfmMKtwNSrnGiZoql6o7vOpKpmpaWotqR7wGxuamtkan9xe8Cunq6rpGKwtrjTrqmeZZeqtqWxjg%3D%3D