BAM: Next Wave Festival

Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, founded in 1983 by impresario Harvey Lichtenstein, gathered performances in which genres mixed and traditions were upended. Events held in downtown lofts were given larger venues at BAM. Choreographers, directors, artists and musicians now had access to bigger audiences. The first festivals included New York artists Trisha Brown, Philip Glass, Bill T. Jones, Laurie Anderson, Robert Rauschenberg, Lucinda Childs and Robert Wilson. International companies were folded into the Next Wave, introducing New York viewers to Pina Bausch, Robert Lepage, Sankai Juku and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. During intermissions, art-world luminaries mixed with dance and theater makers. In 1999, Joseph V. Melillo took over the artistic reins of the festival. By 2012, the Fishman Space opened—a venue for smaller-scale performances—joining the Howard Gilman Opera House and the BAM Harvey Theater. This book surveys the festival’s performances by genre, with photos and ephemera from BAM’s archive and a chronology of performances.