City of Dance

CITY OF DANCE — Overview
In June 2026, L.A. Dance Project and Paris Dance Project present the U.S. premiere of Benjamin Millepied’s public dance initiative, La Ville Dansée / City of Dance.

Premiering in 2025, La Ville Dansée drew more than 10,000 spectators across Paris and four neighboring cities through seven free performances in iconic public spaces.

In 2026, City of Dance activates sites across Los Angeles, and proposes a simple but radical idea: to take dance out of the theater and into the shared spaces of civic life. In doing so, the project asks how movement can deepen our understanding of one another, expand empathy, and reveal the stories held within the city itself.

Set to Philip Glass’s score for Koyaanisqatsi (1982), five choreographers — Dimitri Chamblas, Madeline Hollander, Benjamin Millepied, Jamar Roberts, and Pam Tanowitz — each respond to a section of the music, creating a unified work reflecting on technology, modern life, and a world out of balance.

CHOREOGRAPHERS

Dimitri Chamblas
From the duet À bras-le-corps created with Boris Charmatz in 1993 to the one with Kim Gordon in 2018, Dimitri Chamblas’s career reflects a taste for encounters that he continuously implements. He collaborates with numerous artists such as Bret Easton Ellis, William Forsythe, Emmanuelle Huynh, Glen Keane, Benjamin Millepied, Mathilde Monnier, Alex Prager, Nile Rodgers, Claire Tabouret, and Virginie Viard.
In 2015, he founded and directed the 3e Scène at the Paris National Opera, then became director of dance at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles in 2017. His work has been presented at the Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Paris National Opera, Performa New York, and the Louvre Museum.
Today, through his Studio, he develops projects such as takemehome with Kim Gordon, Crowd Out, an opera for 1000 voices, and Slow Show, a performance that slows down time. In 2024, he created the performance Fountain at La Contemporaine in Nîmes. Alternately dancer, teacher, choreographer, and artistic director, dance is the vehicle that allows him to travel through various geographical and social contexts around the world.

Madeline Hollander
Initially trained as a ballet dancer, Madeline Hollander (b. 1986, Los Angeles, CA) studied cultural anthropology and visual arts at Barnard College (BA) and Bard College (MFA), New York. Solo exhibitions of her work have been mounted at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2021); the University of Texas at Austin, Visual Arts Center (2020); Bortolami Gallery, New York (2020); The Artist’s Institute, New York (2018). Her work has been exhibited at the Brandhorst Museum, Munich, Germany (2022); Performa Biennial, New York (2021); The Aldrich Museum, Connecticut (2020); the Whitney Biennial curated by Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta (2019), Helsinki Contemporary, Finland (2019), the Work Marathon Festival at the Serpentine Galleries in London (2018), and Centre Pompidou Metz, France (2019).
As a choreographer, Hollander’s pieces have been performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Joyce, New York; The Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris, and Louvre Abu Dhabi with the Los Angeles Dance Project, and she has collaborated with Jordan Peele on his feature film Us (2019) and Urs Fisher’s immersive installation PLAY at Gagosian, New York (2019) and Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, CA (2019).

Benjamin Millepied
Benjamin Millepied is a choreographer, director, and former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet. Born in Bordeaux in 1977, he spent his childhood in Senegal before returning to France. He began dancing with Vladimir Skouratoff in Bordeaux, then continued his training at the Lyon Conservatory and the School of American Ballet. In 1995, he joined the New York City Ballet, becoming a principal dancer in 2001. He simultaneously began his career as a choreographer and founded the Danses Concertantes project.
In 2010, he choreographed and performed in Black Swan, which brought him worldwide recognition.
He founded L.A. Dance Project in 2012, a company dedicated to contemporary creation. Appointed Director of Dance at the Paris Opera Ballet in 2013, he modernized the company by launching a dance medicine program and a digital stage. He invited choreographers such as Forsythe, McGregor, and Pite before resigning in 2016 to focus on creation.
Among his recent works are Romeo and Juliet for LADP, Me.You.We.They at the Paris Philharmonie, and in 2024, the ballet Grace Jeff Buckley dances.
In 2025, he presents Rituels by Pierre Boulez at the Paris Philharmonie.
Benjamin Millepied was awarded the Legion of Honor in 2024 for his contribution to the arts.

Jamar Roberts
Jamar Roberts, is a celebrated choreographer based in New York, USA. Jamar is a Resident Choreographer of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (2019–2022), and has had numerous works grace various stages, showcasing his distinct artistic voice. His choreography has been commissioned by leading companies, including New York City Ballet, Miami City Ballet, the Martha Graham Company, BalletX, Ailey 2, and The Juilliard School, where he served as a Creative Associate.

He graduated from New World School of the Arts (Miami, FL) and The Ailey School (New York, NY), and has danced for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ailey II, and Complexions Contemporary Ballet. His performance career includes a Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer (2016) and guest appearances with The Royal Ballet in London. His expansive creative work extends to film, including Cooped and A Chronicle of a Pivot at a Point in Time (Works & Process at the Guggenheim) and The First Bluebird in the Morning (LA Opera).

Pam Tanowitz
Pam Tanowitz is a celebrated New York-based choreographer and collaborator who has steadily delineated her own dance language through decades of research and creation. She redefines tradition through careful examination, subtly questioning those who came before her yet never yielding to perceptions stuck in the past. Today, the world’s most respected companies—Martha Graham Dance Company, Royal Ballet, New York City Ballet—are integrating her poetic universe into their repertories. Her combination of intentional unpredictability, whimsical complexity and natural drama evokes master dance makers from Cunningham to Balanchine. She is a graduate from Ohio State University and Sarah Lawrence College, she has founded Pam Tanowitz Dance in 2000.
Her work Four Quartets (2018), inspired by T.S. Eliot’s literary masterpiece, was called “the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century” by the New York Times. She is currently a professor at Mason Gross School of the Arts/Rutgers University and the first-ever choreographer in residence at the Fisher Center at Bard.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
L.A. Dance Project and Paris Dance Project present the U.S. premiere of City of Dance in 2026.
L.A. Dance Project presents this new edition with a newly commissioned section, with foundational support from Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels.

The Century Park Art Fund supports the presentation of City of Dance at Century Park, including the newly commissioned section.

The City of Santa Monica Recreation and Arts Department Art of Recovery Fund and the City of Santa Monica Office of Sustainability and the Environment support the Tongva Park performance and panel.

We gratefully acknowledge additional contributions from Villa Albertine, and the Albertine Foundation through the FUSED program, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and LA County Arts & Culture, with in‑kind support provided by, the Marciano Art Foundation, Hollywood Forever, and Gloria Molina Grand Park at The Music Center in Downtown L.A.

City of Dance was originally commissioned as La Ville Dansée by Paris Dance Project in 2025, with support from CHANEL and Richard Mille, who continue to support Paris Dance Project’s artistic initiatives.

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

“The film Koyaanisqatsi found me in the late nineties and never left. Its political force — its warning of a world out of balance — has stayed with me ever since. For years, I dreamed of commissioning a dance to Philip Glass’s extraordinary score. My dream is the event of this year’s City of Dance. I imagined five choreographers, each taking on a specific musical section of the film, coming together to create a single work — a work defined by the velocity of technology and the toll it exacts on nature, on society, on us. Koyaanisqatsi is as urgent today as the day it was made. Perhaps more so. It has been a thrill for all of us to come together and make this piece.”

— Benjamin Millepied