BAAD! continues to center Black and Latinx queer art in its annual festival
The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!) proudly announces the 2026 edition of its BlakTinX Performance Series, running from September 15 through November 21, 2026. This multidisciplinary festival celebrates the convergence of Black and Latinx artistry through dance, theater, music, literature, ritual, and performance. This year’s programming uplifts ancestral legacies while spotlighting bold, contemporary expressions that resonate with the Bronx and beyond.
“BlakTinX honors our histories and cultures and also offers new artistic expressions,” says BAAD! Co-Founder Charles Rice-González. “The festival invites audiences into intimate stories, radical imaginings, joyful expressions, and community-centered celebrations of Black and Latinx life and creativity, holding fast to the values of these perspectives and shining against attempts of erasure.”
The 2026 BlakTinX Performance Series showcases an energetic lineup of queer perspectives and intergenerational storytelling. Highlights include collaborations with Angela’s Pulse’s Dancing While Black, celebrating its 10th Anniversary, as well as Pepatián’s annual Dancing Futures Residency. Other festival events include dance commissions, Underground Transmissions by André M. Zachery’s Renegade Performance Group, and choreographer j. bouey’s The Living Ancestors. BAAD! will also celebrate the 15th anniversary of Charles Rice-Gonzalez’s renowned queer Latino novel, Chulito, and the NYC book launch of Courageous Heart: The Power of Transformation, a book that aims to transform lives through love and self-reliance. Explore the full program of events in the Festival Schedule below.
Most events take place in person at BAAD! (2474 Westchester Ave, Bronx), with select performances offered virtually. Tickets range from free to $25, with sliding scale options available. BAAD! continues its commitment to accessibility by offering free admission to residents of Bronx zip codes 10474 and 10461.
BlakTinX 2026 Festival Schedule
Tuesday, September 15 @ 7PM | FREE
Happy Birthday, Vamir!
Join BAAD! as we celebrate the life, love, artistry, and joy of our beloved Vamir, an artist and theater technician, on what would have been his birthday, over a year after his passing. Together we'll honor his incredible spirit with some of his favorite foods, stories, birthday cake, a community altar of photos and memories (bring things to include), and performances by artists inspired by the creativity, connection, and joy he brought into the world. Whether Vamir was your friend, colleague, chosen family, or someone whose legacy you wish to discover, come gather in celebration and remembrance, and hear a special announcement!
Saturday, September 19 @ 11AM - 4:30PM | FREE
Dancing While Black 10th Anniversary Public Masterclasses with Adia Whitaker, Rashida Bumbray, Tyrone Bevans and j. bouey
Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the DWB Fellowship. DWB Alumni and stellar, award-winning artists Adia Whitaker (11am), Rashida Bumbray (1pm), Tyrone Bevans and j. bouey (3pm) will lead a day of vibrant workshops centering Black dance praxis. Open to all.
Friday, September 25 and Saturday, September 26 @ 7:30PM | $20
Underground Transmissions by André M Zachery
Underground Transmissions brings together two Afrofuturist multimedia choreographic works by Renegade Performance Group Artistic Director André M. Zachery—Webbed Fugues and Respiration (BX). These works explore how Black communities carry, transform, and reimagine knowledge across generations. Drawing from Black Atlantic cultural practices, Hip Hop, speculative fiction, and contemporary performance, the works celebrate the Bronx as a site of cultural invention where collective memory, embodied storytelling, and creative innovation generate new possibilities for the future.
Friday, October 2 and Saturday, October 3 at 8PM | Sliding Scale: $5, $10, $15, $20
Legacies in Action: 2026 Dancing While Black Fellowship Show
Don’t miss witnessing new works in development by the 2026 Dancing While Black (DWB) Fellows. These six artists gathered monthly since March to build community with one another and master teachers in the field. This showing of new works supports the ongoing innovation of their creative practice and process. Friday, October 2 features Elinor Kleber Diggs, Mai'yah Kau and Quaba Ernest, while Saturday, October 3 features Aryanna Allen, Imogene Williams, and Indigo Sparks. Each show will be followed by a Q&A with the artists.
Friday, October 9 @ 8PM | FREE
Making My Ballroom Story and the Three Ps
Experience an exclusive short screening and discussion of the documentary My Ballroom Story, directed by Felix Rodriguez. An Afro-Boricua, gay coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the 1990s New York City ballroom scene. Felix Rodriguez, the main videographer of ballroom in that era, uses some of his unseen ballroom footage archive to weave an intimate journey of self-acceptance. Followed by a discussion with Calixto Chinchilla, the Founder and Executive Director of the NY International Latino Film Festival.
Thursday, October 15 @ 7:30PM | FREE
Chulito’s Quince
Celebrate the 15th anniversary of Chulito, Charles Rice-González's award-winning, landmark gay novel, through chapters adapted for the stage, readings by noted actors, and a dance performance. Charles will read a chapter from Hunts Point, the unpublished follow-up to Chulito, and guests will receive a Spanish translation of Chulito's first chapter.
Friday, October 16th and Saturday, October 17 @ 7PM | Sliding Scale: $5–$20
The Living Ancestors by j. bouey
j. bouey, the prolific and mesmerizing performer, brings The Living Ancestors, a multimedia disco-funk space-opera dance that follows a futuristic liberation-minded band of performers guided by a poetic libretto and music mixed live. This work immerses audiences in the story of a future when our global society is at the precipice of abolishing oppression through SATURN, a multi-generational project.
Thursday, October 22 @ 7PM | FREE
NYC Book Launch: Courageous Heart by Myriam Laureano
Follow your heart! Myriam Laureano's Courageous Heart: The Power of Transformation is a groundbreaking book that guides readers to move beyond patterns rooted in fear, separation, and survival and embrace a heart-centered path rooted in love and wholeness. The event features readings, talks and performances to draw from Laureano's decades of clinical practice, spiritual wisdom, evolutionary psychology, and lived experience to explore the relationship and integration between ego and soul, intellect and intuition, and our human and divine nature. Event to be followed by a book signing by Laureano.
Saturday, October 24 @ 8PM | In Person: $20 | Virtual: $0–$20 (Sliding scale)
BlakTinX Dance Compilation
BAAD!’s signature evening of choreography spanning contemporary, experimental, and cultural dance forms. Featuring works by choreographers: Jennifer Acosta, Arielle Telfort, Shontè Jackson, Rathi Varma, Arthur Avilés, Darius Gregory, Elise Barnes, Moon Warner, Felix Ciprian, and Lela Carter.
Thursday, October 29 @ 7PM | In Person: FREE | Virtual: FREE
Courageous Conversations with DJ Sabine Blaizin and Rev. Liz Edman
Whether it’s a church with pews and incense, or a club’s dance floor with body’s moving to a groove, this Courageous Conversation series invites us to share what is a sacred space, a spiritual practice. DJ Sabine Blaizin, the founder of Oyasound Productions, and a cultural worker, and Rev. Liz Edman, author of Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity and Priest in Charge of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, share what moves them and gives them life. BAAD! began Courageous Conversations: Strategies for Living and Loving in America in 2016 as a free facilitated/open community forum for queer people and allies on how to navigate and thrive under challenging social and political climates.
Saturday October 31 @ 8PM | FREE
HalloKween
Celebrate Halloween in BAAD!’s 19th-century chapel with open mic, karaoke, costume contest, and dance party hosted by Bronx drag queens Appolonia Cruz and Viveka Westwood Mugler.
Friday, November 6 and Saturday, November 7 @ 8PM | Sliding Scale: $5–$20
Zainab Floyd | Dancing Futures
Rituals for the Black Caribbean is a cross-cultural and political production of solidarity through the quest of movement with the underlying beat of resistance, rebellion, romance and liberation using movements from Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, and Suriname.
Friday, November 13th and Saturday, November 14 @ 8PM | Sliding Scale: $5–$20
Jeevika Bhat | Dancing Futures
Miyan explores the magical music of Tansen, a legendary 16th century musical prodigy who pioneered the Hindustani Gwalior Gharana. Born mute, it is mythologized that Tansen was mystically gifted with the ability to sing, and grew up to master magical raagas which calmed rogue elephants, caused lamps to spark and burn, and summoned sweet rain from the sky.
Friday, November 20th and Saturday, November 21 @ 8PM | Sliding Scale: $5–$20
Wendy Ann Powell | Dancing Futures
Wendy Ann Powell’s The Portal Within is an exploration of memory, lineage and voices of the past to forge the future. It is the Black spiritual dance practices where strength, joy, resilience, love and pain all converge. The realms of the past, present and future meet to share history, wisdom and destiny.
About BAAD!
The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance (BAAD!) is a nationally-recognized arts organization co-founded in 1998 by award-winning dancer/choreographer Arthur Aviles and writer/activist Charles Rice-Gonzalez. Through its arts programming, BAAD! presents cutting-edge works in dance and all creative disciplines that bring a queer perspective to the socio-political/cultural dialogue of The Bronx and New York City to empower women, people of color and the LGBTQ+ community.
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