Friday September 18th - 7:00 PM

Tickets HERE

Holly Hepp-Galván and Turtle Star Productions presents:
Listening to the Living World

Listening to the Living World is a multidisciplinary evening of music, puppetry, theatre, and storytelling that invites audiences to deepen their connection to one another and to the more-than-human world. Curated by Turtle Star Productions, the program brings together artists whose work explores ecology, wonder, and our evolving relationships with the living world through music, puppetry, theatre, and storytelling.

Siyahamba by Peace of Heart Choir/Holly Hepp-Galván
Traditional South African Song; Land Acknoledgement & Cherokee Morning Song; Give Us Hope - Jim Popoulis; END OF EVENING: One Day - Phil Lawrence.
A volunteer community choir that came together shortly after the September 11, 2001 tragedies.

environmental dance and music improv by Skip La Plante
A musician and two dancers create a series of one minute improvisations using and ever changing collections of found instruments.
Skip La Plante invents, builds, composes for, performs on, and teaches with musical instruments built from trash and found objects. Amiere Bell is a graduate of SUNY Potsdam as well as the Illustrious the Neighborhood Playhouse School where he received Meisner acting training and dance techniques including Cunningham, Graham, Valanova Ballet, Improvisation, and foundations of dance. Cori Kresge is a NYC based dance artist, poet, massage therapist, collaborator and teacher

The Blessing by Kas Hesek
Gaia creates her children - and her heartache. Will they find their way back to her? Borrowing from the practice of cantastoria, 'The Blessing' explores the idea of balance in our world through spoken word and upcycled fabric art panels."
Kas Hesek (she/they) is a Chicago-based performing artist who enjoys dabbling in everything (from goofy TYA musicals to full length Shakespeare) and has developed an unexpected love of puppetry.

Banyan by René Galván/Holly Hepp-Galván
A reading of "Banyan" with musical accompaniment. The Lahaina Banyan Tree (Ficus benghalensis) was nearly destroyed by the wildfires that struck the village of Lahaina (“cruel sun”) in August 2023. A gift from Indian missionaries in 1873, it is the oldest and largest banyan tree in Hawaii. It grew from eight feet to sixty feet and rooted out sixteen major trunks, whose combined canopies formed a living cathedral covering two-thirds of an acre. The banyan is the national tree of India and in many cultures is believed to be inhabited by spirits, or deities. Krishna (who is portrayed as having blue skin in Indian iconography) is said to have delivered the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna from a banyan tree, The Maui fires were so devastating that only four thousand of the island’s forty thousand trees survived. With no place to run, the inhabitants of the village jumped into the bay to escape the encroaching flames. We have seen an increase in wildfires due to climate change, particularly in Australia, Canada and in both the Eastern and Western palisades of the United States. The Lahaina Banyan has made a remarkable comeback due to a lot of love and care much like the Phoenix, that “bird of yore.”
Robert René Galván, born in San Antonio of Indigenous/Mexican heritage, resides in New York City where he works as a professional musician and poet. Madhumita Chatterjee is a member of Peace of Heart Choir.

Water!/Works! by Triple Take Theatre
"Water, water, everywhere / nor any drop to drink". How will water survive in an increasingly thirsty world? Come join our Cantastoria, designed to think, inspire, and perspire.
Cameron Prevatte, He/Him and Chelsea Baxter She/Her - Multifaceted puppeteers, puppet makers, and educators from Detroit, MI.

Birds by Holly Hepp-Galván/Turtle Star Productions
One day an old woman discovers she can understand the birds around her and suddenly realizes just how much they've been paying attention. Part ecological fable and part comedy, "Birds" invites audiences to see the world from an unexpected perspective - one that includes both environmental change and the ever-important location of dropped cheese doodles.
Holly Hepp-Galván (she/her) is the Artistic Director of Turtle Star Productions, a multidisciplinary eco-theatre company, and a Queens-based playwright, book writer, and lyricist. Laurie Bennett (she/her) - Laurie was a corporate lawyer, a university prof, a civil liberties activist, and a mom (well, she is still a mom, but the babies are all growed up), while living in Denver Colorado for decades: then, after rekindling a thing with her college boyfriend from 40 years before, she made the move to NYC, and is now making art, making soup, and making a life for herself in Ridgewood Queens. Ally Harwell (she/her) - is a recent graduate of The Neighborhood Playhouse where she studied Meisner Technique and has been trained in stage, film, voiceover, Shakespeare, stage combat as well as jazz and modern dance. Amiere A. Bell - (he/him) - resides in Queens, NY and is graduate of SUNY Potsdam as well as The illustrious The Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater where he received Meisner acting training and dance techniques including Cunningham, Graham, Vaganova ballet, Improvisation and Foundations of Choreography. Mariano Morales - (he/him) - is an actor, veteran, and father who received a B.F.A in Film Editing from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and a two-year training at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre.

Saturday September 19th - 3:00 PM

Mare Nostrum Elements presents: A Dance Class - An Opening to Truth ‍

Tickets HERE

Saturday September 19th - 7:00 PM

Celebration of Human Rights: What Really Makes Queens Great‍ ‍

Tickets HERE

Wings to Fly: Frida Kahlo Bolero by Oxana Chi Dance & Art
Oxana Chi’s mesmerizing dance ritual blends classical and contemporary movement styles in honor of Frida Kahlo, whose first solo show happened in New York in 1938. Throughout her life, Frida transformed pain into art with remarkable resilience, shaping a unique visual legacy. Oxana's expressive tribute also evokes and invokes the notorious Boléro, originally composed by Maurice Ravel in 1928 as a commissioned work for the dancer and art patron Ida Rubinstein. Chi commissioned Layla Zami to create a soulful live score which is performed live on stage with saxophone and loops. Wings to Fly was originally created in 2021 as a commissioned work for LBI and premiered at 1014 (NYC) and the Transitions Festival (Berlin).
Oxana Chi (she) is a Nigerian-German dancer, choreographer, filmmaker, curator, visual artist, and trendsetter featured in NYC's "A to Z of People Who Power the Dance World", and a recipient of the Performance Studies international award. Dr. Layla Zami (she/they) is a French-Caribbean artist-scholar and multi-instrumentalist whose music has charmed audiences from the University of Toronto to the Alliance Française Fortaleza by way of Queens' JCAL. Dorês Maues (she) is a creative Brazilian designer who loves her Amazonian roots and Frida Kahlo.

Heavenly Justice by Steven Gaynor
In Heavenly Angel, Isiah Edwards. a recently departed former professional basketball player, finds himself in front of the Great Decider Angel who will determine whether he and a companion will be allowed to enter the Pearly Gates or be sent down to hell to burn for all eternity; however, as the proceedings go forth, Isiah will come to the realization that the process is unjust and fraught with racism.
Steven Gaynor, he/him/ his - A New York City based playwright who is the producer and author of his third play at the International Human Rights Art Festival. Sophie Schulman, she, her/hers - An NYC based actor and director with a BFA in Drama from NYU Tisch, Sophie is passionate about making art that starts conversations, changes minds, and inspires audiences. Jackson Avery Marshall, He/Him - Jackson is a dynamic actor who has a deep passion to perform and tell stories connecting with audiences through stage and screen. Matthew Paz, He/Him - A Miami-born New York-based performer who fell for musical theater watching Gene Kelly dance in the rain, and now chases that same feeling of pure magic to give it back to every audience he steps in front of. Aiden O'Brien, He/Him/His - Aiden O'Brien is an actor and student based in Syracuse, NY studying theatre at the State University of New York at Oswego.

The Weight of Care by Artistic Director/Facilitator: Mercedes Figueroa
The Weight of Care is a contemporary dance work shaped through movement, text, and sound, beginning with questions of inheritance, childhood, and how we become through the habits and conditions that surround us. Mother Courage and Her Children serves as a structural lens rather than a script to reenact, allowing the piece to trace care as compromised, survival as conditioning, and the ways bodies learn to repeat what has been taught. Grounded in the lived experience of young women in the U.S., the work is not borrowing suffering as material but examining how labor, compromise, memory, and survival are already embedded in our bodies and relationships.
Trigger warnings: childhood themes, emotional neglect, loss, and compromised care.
Music/Vocals: Vera Chirco Popovic. Performers: Alissa Colon, Analucía Zambrano, Laina Stanton, Maddie Nellis, Raagini Negii, Rowan Benz.

What the Wind Tells Us by Jasmine “JRose” Rosario

The Speed of Stopping by Chris Ferris & Dancers
The Speed of Stopping is a dance about a continuum that is altered abruptly, softly, or is unstoppable. In a world where people are falling with intention, propelling themselves through space with laxity, or pounding the floor and air; these options bring about different choices for being strong. This dance explores how we live in this world of extreme differences but appreciate one another or walk away. Boundaries are created and alliances are made in this nontheatrical abstract form of pure dance. This dance works solos against duets and duets against trios to assemble into a quartet. The dance was created first and then the music composed specifically for this dance.
Chris Ferris (she/her) is the Artistic Director of Chris Ferris & Dancers, a company known for its fearless action, physical indulgence, and elegant design the seats you squarely in the present tense of performance. Loren Kiyoshi Dempster (he/him) uses a combination of cello, secondary instruments, computer, electronics, composition, improvisation, notated scores, and world music influences to create and perform music. Mackenzie Bingham (she/they) is a NYC-based freelance artist with a BFA in Dance from SUNY Purchase College, and is currently performing under Chris Ferris and Chloe Roberts. Kayla Laufer (she/her) is a contemporary dancer and choreographer based in New York City who is excited to be performing with Chris Ferris & Dancers at the International Human Rights Art Festival. Caleb Patterson (he/them) is a contemporary modern artist in New York City and he’s very happy to be here. Payge Lecakes (they/themme) is a New York-based movement artist, maker, and worker who, after graduating from the Conservatory of Dance at SUNY Purchase College, has performed work by the likes of Danielle Diniz, Joyce King, Kathryn Pace, Fredrick Earl Mosley, and Kanon Sugino in addition to working as the founder and director of the movement-arts collective Not A Dance Company.

Sunday September 20th - 3:00 PM

A Celebration of Diversity‍: From the World’s Most Diverse Neighborhood ‍

Tickets HERE

Dandelion by Two Queens In Queens ‍
This 20 minute Solo Show called "Dandelion" written and performed by Angel Williams will make people laugh, think, and feature an original song by Ms. Milyon. Directed by KM Jones.
Angel Milyon (Writer/Performer) originally from Newark, NJ. Grew up in South Florida. And presently resides in Jamaica, Queens, NY and is The Musical Director for Shades of Truth Theater as a vocalist and actress. KM Jones (She/Her) (Director) is a NYC theatre maker and arts advocate with a strong background in socially engaged performance.

The Citizenship Test/Poetic Fragments of a Document-less Soul by Marina Otchuda Say Gynt
This multidisciplinary audiovisual poetry performance explores displacement, the bureaucratic violence of documentation, the fragmentation of memory, and the search for emotional and legal refuge. Joanna Doe is an amnesiac in New York attempting to understand who she is, where she comes from, and how to inhabit the world around her. Joanna has no reliable past. Her voice is her only passport; the walls of memory form her only border. Spoken and whispered poetry unfolds alongside experimental video: residual cityscapes, flickering document scans, and ghostlike personal artifacts. Through repetition, distortion, and improvisational layering, the work asks what it means to claim citizenship within one’s own body and story.
Marina Otchuda Say Gynt is a multidisciplinary artist from Croatia creating across performing and visual arts disciplines.

Ella, Marilyn and the Mocambo by Dara Hartley
Ella, Marilyn, and the Mocambo is a 10-minute puppet performance inspired by the true story of how famed Hollywood movie star Marilyn Monroe used her celebrity to help legendary jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald secure a career-defining engagement at Hollywood's Mocambo nightclub in 1955. Through handcrafted imagery and speculative storytelling, the piece imagines the conversations, tensions, and competing perspectives surrounding a pivotal moment in entertainment history. Rooted in historical events but free to imagine what history left undocumented, the performance explores race, beauty, allyship, celebrity, and the friendship between two extraordinary women who recognized one another's humanity and talent when much of the world only saw how they looked.
Dara Hartley (she/her) is a Queens-based multidisciplinary artist who combines craft, emerging technologies, puppetry, and storytelling to reimagine overlooked histories.

母誉 — Sacred Mother Within by Mariko Shibata
Episode Three: 母誉 ーSacred Mother Withinー unfolds as a quiet ritual where memory breathes through the body, silence becomes presence, and stillness transforms into prayer across generations.
Mariko Shibata (she/her) is a Japanese-born movement artist, choreographer, dancer, and yoga instructor whose nearly four decades of dance practice inform an interdisciplinary body of work integrating improvisation, Butoh-inspired movement, theater, live performance, film, and embodied storytelling rooted in migration, motherhood, and lived experience.

Ardha Narishwara - A Choreography of Unity and Contrast by Neela Zareen/Neela Dance Academy
This is an Indian classical dance in the Kuchipudi style that traces the dialogue between Shiva and Shakti, as embodiments of male and female energies - using movement to illuminate how masculine stillness and feminine dynamism coexist as equal, interdependent forces; through shifting expression, gestures and footwork. The piece is a meditation on balance, equity, and the shared responsibilities that shape both the divine and our human world.
Neela Zareen (she/her), founder of Neela Dance Academy, is a Kuchipudi artist whose work blends classical rigor with contemporary human‑rights storytelling, exemplified in her evocative performance of Ardha Narishwara for the International Human Rights Festival.

Sunday September 20th - 7:00 PM

Celebration of Immigration!

Tickets HERE

Between Two Shores: Music, Migration, and Belonging by Dario Chiazzolino & Laura Giannini
Between Two Shores: Music, Migration, and Belonging is an original performance for violin and guitar exploring the emotional experience of migration through three interconnected stages: departure, displacement, and belonging. Combining original composition, improvisation, and brief spoken passages, the work reflects the uncertainty of leaving home, the persistence of memory, and the gradual creation of a new identity between cultures. Drawing on contemporary jazz, European traditions, chamber music, and the multicultural environment of Queens, the musical dialogue between violin and guitar transforms distance and fragmentation into connection, resilience, and a renewed sense of home.
Trigger warnings: references to displacement, separation, and the emotional challenges of migration.
Laura Giannini (she/her) is an award-winning Italian violinist, chamber musician, recording artist, and educator who has performed internationally as a soloist and ensemble musician and currently serves as Director of the Chamber Music Program at Hoff-Barthelson Music School. Dario Chiazzolino (he/him) is an internationally acclaimed jazz guitarist, composer, recording artist, and educator whose award-winning career includes performances and collaborations with jazz luminaries such as Billy Cobham, Bob Mintzer, Russell Ferrante, Peter Bernstein, and Horacio “El Negro” Hernández.

Nüshu by Valkyrie Yao and Selina Zhang
Nüshu is a solo performance drawn from the women’s script created and carried in Hunan province through writing, embroidery, song, and sworn sisterhood. Centered on one female performer and an extremely long braid attached to her hair, the work treats the braid as weight, extension, inheritance, discipline, ornament, burden, and record. Moving between beauty and damage, intimacy and erasure, the braid becomes a second script: dragging, knotting, catching, and writing across the floor. The piece asks what a body carries when the archive has failed it, and what survives in gesture, relation, and repetition when women’s knowledge has been pushed to the edge of disappearance.
Trigger Warnings: references to gendered erasure, bodily control, historical silencing, and the disposability of women’s labor and knowledge.
Yuxin (Valkyrie) Yao (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, and researcher working across performance, moving image, and embodied archives to examine women’s memory, cultural transmission, and histories pushed to the margins - https://www.elsehereglobal.com/. Selina (Shixuan) Zhang (she/her) is a contemporary dance artist and creative producer exploring feminine heritage through her original Nüshu-inspired movement pieces.

Replanted - Migration in Motion by In Motion
Replanted is a multidisciplinary performance that weaves spoken word and live music into a powerful exploration of migration, identity, and belonging. Drawing on both research and lived experience, the work traces journeys of displacement, adaptation, and resilience, inviting audiences to reflect on what it means to build a home across cultures and generations.
Trigger warnings: themes of migration, displacement, loss, and personal reflections on identity.
Hudson Holms (He/Him) Brooklyn-based indie artist known for vulnerable, abstract storytelling and soulful live performances, with releases including Muse and Honolulu. Jus Muse (She/Her) Jamaican-born, Queens-based composer and vocalist blending R&B, Neo Soul, and Reggae into a sultry, emotionally authentic sound. Eljon Wardally (She/Her) Award-winning Grenadian Italian-American playwright, screenwriter, and spoken word artist whose work amplifies underrepresented voices through themes of identity, family, and cultural memory. Oriana Nino (She/Her) Venezuelan/Mexican political researcher and artist based in Queens, NY, whose work bridges political research with music, dance, and public engagement to explore democracy and lived political experience.

Gira de Carolinas by Selma Trevino
Gira de Carolinas is a solo physical theatre performance inspired by the rituals of Umbanda, an Afro-Brazilian religion. Through movement, spoken text, and live percussion, performer Selma Trevino gives voice to women whose stories have been marginalized or erased from history. Drawing on Brazilian literature, ritual practice, and the Corporeal Mime of Étienne Decroux, the performance becomes a journey through memory, resilience, and transformation. This work-in-progress is part of a larger full-length project that will ultimately weave together seven stories of extraordinary women whose lives continue to resonate across generations.
Brazilian-born and based in New York, Selma Trevino (she/her) is a performer, choreographer, educator, whose work bridges Corporeal Mime, physical theatre and intercultural performance. Vilcimar Mariano-Conceicão (he/his) is a Brazilian from Rio de Janeiro, percussionist, poetry writer and samba dancer.

Between Staying and Going by Sara Pizzi - sarAika movement collective
"Between Staying and Going" explores how seemingly contradictory emotions can coexist during periods of change and transition. Inspired by immigrant experiences and long-distance relationships across cultures, the work investigates attachment and separation, continuity and transformation, loss and possibility. Through synchronized and diverging movement pathways, the performers navigate shifting states of connection. At times they move as if sharing a single rhythm and direction; at others, they follow distinct physical trajectories while remaining subtly linked. The choreography embraces emotional multiplicity, revealing how moving forward does not necessarily require letting go. Rather than presenting a linear narrative, the work creates a layered physical landscape where different emotional realities unfold simultaneously. The piece asks: How do we move forward without letting go?
Sara Pizzi (she/her) is an Italian dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher in New York City. She graduated from Steps on Broadway and Peridance Certificate programs in 2020. Sara performs with several esteemed dance companies. She is also the co-founder of the sarAika Movement Collective. Sara has graced notable stages such as Lincoln Center, City Center, Mark Morris, and NYLA, and has been featured on the Times Square billboard. Her work was first commissioned in 2021, culminating in her debut evening-length performance, a European-Japan tour in 2023, and she received her first choreographic residency in 2024. As a dedicated educator, Sara teaches at Dalton School and for the "Hands are for Holding" program by Gibney. Additionally, she works as an associate photographer and videographer for BECCAVISION and curator committee for Dance Parade.