Art Share @ Lincoln Center: A Glow-Up Story

On a rainy Saturday morning in late April, more than 100 of our amazing singers, dancers, actors, and poets made their way through the monsoon marauding Manhattan to the David Rubinstein Atrium at Lincoln Center for BAE’s annual Art Share extravaganza.

For those who’ve been with us for quite sometime, you’ve seen our art shares (born in the pandemic times) grow from a zoom room in 2020, to street corners in Brooklyn and Upper Manhattan in 2021, to the rooftop of our office in 2022, and now to Lincoln Center in 2023!

It was almost too good to believe for some of our young performers: “When my teacher first told me, I thought we were performing at the Lincoln Hospital down the street from our school [in the South Bronx],” said a dancer from Bronx Academy of Letters. Suffice it to say, they were pleasantly surprised when they found out that they were in fact performing at one of the most revered performing arts venues in the world.

An art share is not an opportunity to be “perfect” or “the best” but instead an opportunity to share where you’re at, what you love, what you’re proud of, where you’ve come from, and where you’re going. With a mission to decolonize arts education, we were particularly proud to bring this unique brand of performance to a place synonymous with elitism and exclusivity. And the audiences loved it!! Populated by friends, families, and fans, the roar from the packed house approached deafening! Dancers from the Bronx were screaming their faces off for their new-found friends in Brooklyn. Our downtown drama club snatched wigs in a scene from Euphoria, our midtown drama club melted our hearts with their vulnerable personal monologues, and our uptown drama club sang their faces off with vocal solos. The Bronx Letters vocal club serenaded us with “oldies” from the ‘90s.

One of our young actors couldn’t get over the fact that they had just performed a scene at Lincoln Center. “Did you see me? Did you see me?” they asked anyone who would listen. We did!

Afterwards, everyone feasted on food from Jacob’s Soul food and PS Kitchen, served by our wonderful board members and teaching artists. Nothing goes better with amazing art than fried chicken, mac’n’cheese, cornbread, and green beans. A huge thank you to everyone at Lincoln Center for generously welcoming us into your home, our amazing hosts: Trae & Luis, and all of the teaching artists who made this event such a success: Tiffany, Patty, ChuChi, Brett, Luis, Trae, Juanita, Emily, Megan, and Ashleigh!

See you next year - who knows where the glow up will go next?

Check out the sizzle reel above, shot by Brett Tubbs and edited by Luis Mora, and the photos below, by Josh Silk.