May 5, 2023 By Michael Dorgan
The Queensboro Dance Festival will celebrate its 10th season next month and organizers plan on making it a year to remember with 30 outdoor events set to take place across the borough.
The dance festival will kick off on June 3 and will run throughout the summer with the final event taking place on Sept. 17, as part of a three-day closing weekend. Performances will take place throughout western Queens neighborhoods such as Jackson Heights, Corona and Ridgewood, as well as in Rochdale and Far Rockaway.
This season’s lineup will include 25 dance companies representing 18 different dance cultures, organizers said. Nearly all the dance routines will be new works and performed publicly for the first time, organizers said. All events take place outdoors and are free to attend, bar the final weekend which will be ticketed.
Several dance companies performed at an event in Jackson Heights on Tuesday, May 2, to preview the festival.
Karesia Batan, the founder and executive director of the Queensboro Dance Festival, and Council member Shekar Krishnan, who represents Jackson Heights, were among those in attendance.
“We are so proud and grateful to have reached this 10-year milestone,” Batan said. “We wouldn’t have gotten this far without the support of so many cultural partners and the belief our dance community has in us.”
Batan, a dancer herself, created her dance group-turned-production company The Physical Plant in 2010 before she established the festival in 2014. Her goal was to give Queens dancers and choreographers an accessible space to learn from each other. The festival has won multiple awards, including being named the Best in Arts & Humanities with the Long Island City Game Changer award in 2019.
She said she hopes the festival will grow even more over the coming years.
“Yet we know there are still more underrepresented Queens dance groups to meet and bring together, and more areas of Queens we…
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