The Very Best Festivals

21st Annual HOT! Festival, New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC), Out Like That! Festival, The Fresh Fruit Festival

Don’t miss the 21st Annual HOT! Festival, the longest continuously running LGBTQ performance festival in the world, playing at Dixon Place Jul 1-31. The festival features the best emerging and established LGBTQ artists in theatre, dance, music, literature, performance art and homoeroticism for the whole family! This year’s festival includes performances by Natti Vogel, Rebecca Nagel, and Carmelita Tropicana and Marga Gomez.

The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC), the largest multi-arts festival in North America, returns to the city Aug 10–26. This year, the festival will offer 200 shows in 20 venues spotlighting some of the world’s best emerging theatre troupes and dance companies. LGBT highlights of this year’s festival include 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche, Antigone Unearthed, Becoming Butch, Girls Liberation Front, I Married a Nun, June and Nancy and Mallory/Valerie.

The Bronx Academy of Art & Dance (BAAD) returns for its twelfth year of defiantly keeping it queer in the Bronx with its Out Like That! Festival, running through Jun 28. BAAD celebrates gay Pride with a fierce lineup of dance, theatre, film, art and wonderful performances. This year’s highlights include Out On Our Limbs, an evening of beautiful works by fearless choreographers Maria Bauman/MBDance, Toni Renee Johnson/Maverick Dance Experience and Tadashi; and BAAD! Salon, soul-baring, intimate, interactive evening of new and recent work in dance, literature, performance and visual art with Arthur Aviles, Cassandra and Elizabeth “Macha” Marrero.

The Fresh Fruit Festival, New York’s only multidiscipline celebration of LGBT arts and culture, celebrates its tenth summer season with a juicy menu of plays, performance, visual art, dance, poetry, music and film. This summer the festival runs from Jul 14 – 29 at The Wild Project, Nuyorican Poets Cafe and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Highlights of this year’s festival include a reading of Dustin Lance Black’s play “8”; Bad Habits starring Kelli Dunham, and Ejaculating Beauty starring Amiee Herman.


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