Hamptons Dance Project returns to Springs for its eighth season August 7–9, as stars of American Ballet Theatre trade the Metropolitan Opera House for Fireplace Lodge, a sweeping bluff-top stage overlooking Gardiner’s Bay. The weekend has become one of the East End’s most distinctive cultural events, bringing together world-class dancers and choreographers in an intimate coastal setting. This summer’s program features ballets by Justin Peck, Benjamin Millepied, Lar Lubovitch, and Jorma Elo, alongside a new work by ABT alum Gemma Bond, a rising choreographic voice marking her fifth commission for Hamptons Dance Project, as well as pieces by current company members James Whiteside and Duncan Lyle.

Hamptons Dance Project is the brainchild of Jose Sebastian, an ABT company member and director of the ABT Incubator choreographic workshop. Adopted from New York City foster care at age two, he discovered his love of movement on his first trip out East with his mother, Pat. Along with his sister, they vacationed there throughout the 1990s, when Pat, a public school teacher, was able to stretch her tax refund to cover a modest summer rental. “I just have these magical memories,” Jose says. “I was always running in the wind and jumping in the ocean.” One night in 2018, after a performance at Lincoln Center, mother and son were walking uptown when they began talking about those formative holidays. “Jose said, ‘Mom, someday I want to bring the dancers to East Hampton to dance,’” Pat recalls. “And I said, ‘Don’t say someday, just do it. I’ll help you.’”

The project’s success has come in part from the Sebastians’ belief that anything is possible. Hamptons Dance Project’s inaugural 2019 season was held at Guild Hall in East Hampton. The following summer, Covid-19 restrictions forced a drastic shift: The show moved outdoors, with just 50 people allowed, including the artists. “I curated a program with a bunch of solos and one group piece with three guys, and we made it work,” Jose recalls. That improvisational spirit ultimately shaped Hamptons Dance Project’s identity. In 2021, the program relocated to its current venue, a former girls’ camp transformed in the 1970s by artist Mary Bayes Ryan for community use. The property includes a barn, yurts, and a platform stage, but no dance-specific infrastructure. “There is no sprung floor, dressing rooms, seating, or stage lighting, so we rent a Marley [floor] and some tents and chairs,” Pat says. “And I ask the sun to shine a light on us at certain points during the show,” Jose jokes.

He aims to make Hamptons Dance Project performances accessible both to ABT fans summering out East and to neighbors who are not regular balletgoers, programming works that move between what he calls “purely classical tutu pieces” and more interdisciplinary forms. Guest tap artist Jared Alexander will return for his third season, while pianist David Evans will play Brahms live on stage for Lubovitch’s male pas de deux Each Within Their Own Time, danced by Jose and Aran Bell. A defining feature of the weekend is its embrace of dancers as multi-hyphenates. Bell will also dance a Whiteside-choreographed solo performed to a live rendition of pop-soul singer Rozzi’s “Joshua Tree,” with dancer Tristan Brosnan on guitar backup. Meanwhile, Lyle’s neoclassical Pas d’Aurore will feature Brosnan and Fangqi Li in pastel costumes the dancer-choreographer-costume designer stitched himself.

Pas d’Aurore debuted during the 2025 ABT Incubator, alongside another Whiteside work on the program, Mantle, set to Renée Fleming’s recording of Franz Schubert’s lieder. The later ballet evolved from an earlier duet, On the Water, which Whiteside performed with Isabella Boylston at Hamptons Dance Project’s inaugural season in 2019 and again in 2024. “I’m a big beach person, so I feel really lucky to be able to dance and show my dances in this beautiful natural environment,” Whiteside says. But Hamptons Dance Project is not all work and no play: The dancers spend a week rehearsing together, with time to revisit the founder’s childhood haunts, from swimming at Main Beach to dinners at Il Cappuccino and ice cream at Big Olaf in Sag Harbor. “Something about the light, landscape, and pace of the Hamptons invites creativity,” Bond says. “New work seems to arrive there with a little more freedom and a little more wonder.”

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