2026 BREAKING GROUND Contemporary Dance Festival

Tempe, AZ — The Breaking Ground Contemporary Dance Festival returns to the Tempe Center for the Arts for its 2026 season, celebrating 19 years of bold, boundary-pushing contemporary dance. Curated by national adjudicators, the festival features work by 16 choreographers and over 50 performers from Arizona, across the U.S., and abroad.

New this year, each evening begins with a free Community Movement Class in the TCA Lobby (6:45–7:15 PM), open to dancers and non-dancers alike, and introduces guest hosts—with The Ladies hosting Friday and Lolita Hernandez hosting Saturday. The 2026 festival also highlights international artists from Canada, Italy, and South Korea.

The festival takes place January 30–31 at 7:30 PM at the Tempe Center for the Arts, 700 W. Rio Salado Parkway, Tempe, with post-show Q&A sessions each night.

Tickets range from $30–$40 and are available at tempecenterforthearts.com.

This year’s standout performances include:

Valkyrie Yao is a China-born multidisciplinary artist and scholar currently based in Arizona following the completion of her MFA at Arizona State University. Profile XX is an intergenerational feminist dance theatre work examining how womanhood is shaped by social surveillance, inherited memory, and psychological fragmentation.

Cristina Camacho (aka Macho) is a Los Angeles– and New York–based choreographer and performer whose work bridges contemporary and street styles, with credits spanning MTV, BET, The CW, and leading concert dance venues. Who’s Afraid of Forever? is a contemporary dance quartet reimagining Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? through time and memory, reframing two couples as a single relationship split between younger and older selves.

Fabio Liberti is an Italian choreographer based in Denmark whose work has been presented internationally across Europe and North America, with commissions for companies including Danish Dance Theatre, Skånes Dansteater, and Norrdans. Don’t, Kiss. Louisiana is a physically demanding duet examining addiction and relational co-dependency through sustained physical contact, with performers remaining lip-locked throughout the piece.

This diverse lineup promises an inspiring and unforgettable experience, celebrating the creativity and impact of contemporary dance.

Information about the 2026 Breaking Ground Contemporary Dance Festival and CONDER/dance may be found at conderdance.com.

The 2026 Breaking Ground Contemporary Dance Festival, produced by CONDER|dance, is a nationally recognized platform for innovative contemporary dance. Led by Artistic Director Carley Conder, CONDER|dance—founded in 2003—brings together many of Phoenix’s leading contemporary dancers while maintaining an active national presence. The company has presented work across the U.S., including at the Martha Graham Theater at Westbeth Artists Housing in New York City, as well as venues in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and throughout the Southwest. A Resident Arts Organization at the Tempe Center for the Arts, CONDER|dance also curates the annual Tiny Dance Festival and has been recognized by Phoenix New Times for creative collaboration.

MEET THE ARTISTS

Valkyrie Yao
Title XX

Valkyrie Yao is a multidisciplinary artist and scholar whose work spans dance, installation, and moving image, with presentations at Ailey Citigroup Theater, Gibney, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the XV Florence Biennale. Their internationally awarded film Insert Coin to Play was an official selection of the Beijing International Film Festival.

Cristina Camacho (aka MACHO.)
Who’s Afraid of Forever?

Cristina Camacho (aka Macho) is a Los Angeles– and New York–based dancer and choreographer whose work bridges contemporary dance and street styles. Her performance credits include MTV VMAs, BET, The CW, Telemundo, and presentations at 92NY, PACE University, and leading dance festivals.

Fabio Liberti
Don’t, Kiss. Louisiana

Fabio Liberti is an Italian choreographer based in Denmark whose work has been presented internationally across Europe and North America, with commissions for companies including Danish Dance Theatre, Skånes Dansteater, and Norrdans. Don’t, Kiss. Louisiana is a physically demanding duet in which performers remain lip-locked throughout, using sustained intimacy to examine addiction, control, and relational co-dependency.

Megan Keen
Its Motion Keeps

BG26 Student Artist

Megan Keen is a Minnesota-born visual and performing artist and ASU BFA candidate whose multidisciplinary practice blends movement, visual art, and storytelling to explore healing, identity, and human connection. Her new work, Its Motion Keeps, examines shifting group dynamics through a uniformly costumed ensemble, using candles and choral music to reflect on unity, fragility, and life’s continual motion.

Tsiambwom Akuchu
FORWARD, always

Tsiambwom Akuchu is a Los Angeles–based street dance, theater, and performance artist whose work challenges traditional concert dance through socially driven storytelling. Rooted in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, FORWARD, always examines the labor of progress, asking who leads change, at what pace, and at what cost.

Eric Mullis
Instancing Network

Eric Mullis is a Charlotte-based dance artist, scholar, and Fulbright Fellow whose interdisciplinary work bridges choreography, philosophy, and emerging technology. Instancing Network translates improvised movement through motion-visualization software, asking dancers to physically embody digital pathways and revealing how bodies are increasingly enmeshed with technological systems.

Ha Ga-eun
THE HOLD

Ha Ga-eun is a Seoul-based choreographer and dancer whose physically driven work explores emotional tension and human relationships. Her duet THE HOLD examines shifting dynamics of power and restraint, using movement, stillness, and two chairs as symbols of control within an ever-evolving connection.

Carley Conder
Dark Moon

Carley Conder is the Artistic Director of CONDER|dance and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Dance at Arizona State University, with work presented nationally at venues including Dixon Place and WestFest at the Martha Graham Studios. Her trio Dark Moon explores “future nostalgia,” examining the intersections of machine, animal, and human as a meditation on coexistence in an increasingly hybrid, technologically shaped world.

Complete Roster of Artists for BG26: