The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) celebrates its 90th anniversary with a 2026–27 performance season that reflects its long-standing commitment to presenting groundbreaking contemporary artists and multidisciplinary experiences. Highlights include the return of Bill T. Jones for a weekend of performances blending dance, music, and spoken word; The Inevitable Return: Exploding Plastic Revisited, a museum-wide reimagining of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground’s groundbreaking multimedia performances; and an immersive gallery experience by Andrew Schneider, NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars), inspired by Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms.
Tickets go on sale for ICA members on Aug 5, and to the general public on Aug 7.
Colin Stetson & Brìghde Chaimbeul
Sun, Sep 20, 2026 | 8 PM
$30 ICA members / $35 students / $40 non-members
Colin Stetson and Brìghde Chaimbeul come together on All the Light in the World, a collaborative album that feels both ancient and immediate. Built from deep listening, improvisation, and an instinct for emotional intensity, the record merges Stetson’s innovative approach to the saxophone with Chaimbeul’s singular command of the Scottish smallpipes, creating music that drifts between drone, ritual, and cinematic expanse.
This ICA presentation is part of a limited run of shows supporting the album. The tour promises immersive and deeply physical performances that blur the line between concert, composition, and ceremony, presenting All the Light in the World in its most immediate form.
anaiis
Fri, Sep 25, 2026 | 8 PM
$25 ICA members / $30 students / $35 non-members
London-based polymath anaiis makes the kind of music that speaks to an innate sense of wonder. On her most recent album Devotion & The Black Divine, the songs swell with emotional clarity as she lovingly pushes herself beyond the edges of her comfort zone. anaiis seems to be in conversation with the reverence of nature, recognizing our own divinity, and therefore our wholeness in both chaos and beauty. New motherhood deepened anaiis’ understanding of how to react with grace, create with freedom, and captures the reality of being human, unposed and unpredictable. That internal expansion is audible across the record. It leans into the idea that selfhood is something in motion; much like Octavia Butler’s reminder that “God is Change. Everything you touch you change, everything you change, changes you.”
MIDDAY Movement Series and ICA/Boston present Braiding Futures
Fri, Oct 23, 2026 | 8 PM
$15 ICA members / $20 students / $25 non-members
Rough Drafts, a program of MIDDAY Movement Series, is a choreographic lab and teaching residency that supports three emerging Boston-based artists working in contemporary dance. “Braiding Futures,” the artists’ culminating showcase presented at the ICA, explores the themes of cultural resistance and resilience through contemporary movement practices. This year’s Rough Drafts cycle features artists Mira Göksel, Aiden Marshall, and Simon Montalvo, who will each present new and reimagined work developed throughout their residency period.
Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company: Collage Revisited and /Story
Fri, Nov 20, 2026 | 8 PM
Sat, Nov 21, 2026 | 8 PM
Sun, Nov 22, 2026 | 2 PM
$45 ICA members / $50 students / $60 non-members
The Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company return to the ICA with a program reflecting on history, legacy, and continued experimentation.
In Collage Revisited, the full company revisits The History of Collage, the last collaboration between Bill T. Jones and Arnie Zane before Arnie’s death. Originally created in 1988, the remounting is part of a legacy project for the company—looking back to look forward. The piece recalls the excitement the two artists shared as they set out to reconsider dance spectacle during the 1980s art scene. Collage Revisited blends dance, music, and spoken word, exploring themes of identity.
Story/ is the latest result of the company’s continued investigation in using John Cage’s Indeterminacy as a choreographic tool. Following the model for the acclaimed Story/Time, the work employs a random menu of movement that is accompanied by Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 (Death and the Maiden) to craft a conversation between the music and the movement.
The Inevitable Return: Exploding Plastic Revisited
Fri, Dec 11, 2026 | 7 PM
Free with museum admission
On Saturday October 29, 1966, the ICA/Boston hosted a groundbreaking multimedia performance by Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground, under the enigmatic title, “Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” Presented as part of Warhol’s second-ever museum exhibition, the event invited audiences to experience a cacophony of durational light and sound activations, meant to challenge any expectations of instant pleasure or gratification. The Velvet Underground had become well-known for their dark, minimalist, and occasionally abrasive sound. Among Warhol’s goals for the piece were to explore the capacity to bestow renewed interest upon details that are often submerged in the normative, evenly lit flow of time. In addition to live music, the night consisted of film projections, a variety of strobe and spotlights, and choreographed dance, to create a singular, and confrontational, total-art experience.
On the occasion of its 60th anniversary, and as part of 90 YEARS, the museum’s deep dive into its long and storied history, the ICA resurrects the spirit of what has been called one of the greatest concerts in Boston history.
Andrew Schneider: NOWISWHENWEARE (the stars)
January 21-24 + January 28-31, 2027
Open Universe: $20 ICA members / $25 students; / $30 non-members
Guided: $30 ICA members / $35 students / $40 non-members
Inspired in part by Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms, the stars moves beyond an immersive gallery experience: an unseen narrator guides each visitor through an individualized journey into a matrix of light, of the cosmos, and of the self.
With nearly 4,000 reactive LED lights and a 496-channel sound system, the stars traces every decision you have ever made as a contributing factor to being “here” and being “now.” The experience dazzles with light and sound while inviting contemplation on time, memory, and presence — an unforgettable way to visit the stars without ever leaving Earth. Duration varies and may run up to an hour.
This is a non-seated, interactive environment. Audience members are free to move around the space when prompted. There are two ways to experience the stars:
Open Universe
A self-guided open installation experience. Visitors select an entry time, and can explore the space at their own pace.
Guided Experience
A unique 60-minute experience for up to 8 people at a time that invites each guest to consider their individual place in the universe.
Ogemdi Ude: MAJOR
Fri, Feb 26, 2027 | 8 PM
Sat, Feb 27, 2027 | 8 PM
$30 ICA members / $35 students / $40 non-members
MAJOR is a dance theater project exploring the physicality, history, sociopolitics, and interiority of majorette dance, a form that originated in the American South within Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the 1960s. These Black femme teams accompanied by marching bands created a movement style that requires master showmanship with allegiance to count, undulation, groove, and sensual yet strong performativity.
In MAJOR, six Black femmes embrace majorette form – a fundamental relic of Black girlhood – to pursue the intimate journey of returning to bodies they thought lost. Experiments in improvised and verbatim language intertwine with a music score that integrates Southern rap, horns, drumlines, and melodic R&B and soul by Lambkin. A fierce investigation of physical memory and community, MAJOR is a nuanced love letter to the folks who taught the team how to be proudly Black and proudly femme.
Suzanne Bocanegra: Motherhood
Thu, Mar 18, 2027 | 8 PM
Fri, Mar 19, 2027 | 8 PM
$20 ICA members / $25 students; / $30 non-members
Motherhood is the fifth in a series of pieces that transform the artist lecture into a personal, deeply researched, and often hilarious, theatrical event. Combining personal memoir and cultural history with art historical analysis, Motherhood explores the ways society values – or undervalues – the creation, nurturing and education of children, and the way social and political institutions shape our ideas about the value of motherhood. Presented as a slide lecture with actor Judah Lang performing as the artist, Motherhood touches on a wide-range of topics including foundling homes, feminism, mother and child paintings, party planning through the ages, Susan B. Anthony, and nuns. And in the words of Bocanegra, “It will also be funny.”
Sweat Variant (Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born): adaku, part 2
Fri, Apr 9, 2027 | 8 PM
Sat, Apr 10, 2027 | 8 PM
$25 ICA members / $30 students / $35 non-members
For nearly twenty years, choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili and director/designer Peter Born (sweat variant) have created singular performances centering Black womanhood that exist at the edge of dance, theater, and installation. This lineage continues in adaku, part 2, the second installment of a speculative trilogy following a precolonial family ensnared in the transatlantic slave trade. Boldly imagined and inventively staged by Born, Okpokwasili and a cast of dancers enact the story of a young woman in a near-future United States. She has been told she has no history worth remembering — until a revelation cracks that open, unleashing questions of ritual and repair.
