The CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI), an expansive program providing New York City choreographers and dance companies with creative residencies on CUNY college campuses, announces a work-in-process showing of Too soon to discover planets, too late to discover islands (Part III) by Orlando Hernández & The Knee-Heart Connection. The performance is set for May 9, 2026 at 7:30pm at the Hostos Center of the Arts and Culture, 450 Grand Concourse, Bronx, NY 10451. Tickets are free with an RSVP; reserve your seat at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/orlando-hernandez-the-knee-heart-connection-free-event-tickets-1985827163503?aff=oddtdtcreator.

Orlando Hernández & The Knee-Heart Connection present a work-in-progress showing of Part III of Too soon to discover planets, too late to discover islands, an epic dance-theater work. Bringing together tap, live music, masks, and physical theater, Too soon to discover planets… traces the story of an island, the people who arrive there, and the ruptures and reveries that follow. In this newest part, the world explodes into an Afro-Taíno-futurist vision, in which the island becomes a vessel for moving toward other horizons. The showing will be followed by an audience talkback.

Sounds & movements are provided by Keren Abreu, Jackson Clayton, Daniel Fisher-Lochhead, Orlando Hernández, Gregory Richardson, Leonardo Sandoval, Lucas Santana, Isabella Serricella, and Liberty Styles.

Choreography by Orlando Hernández and music direction by Danny Fisher-Lochhead, with music by Fisher-Lochhead, Charles Lloyd, and Behike Marie Nanamaguey Maweiaru.

This work is supported by a CUNY Dance Initiative residency at Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture, and was recently supported by a Works & Process residency at Bridge Street Theatre (NY). Previous iterations have been supported by New York Live Arts, Center for Performance Research, CUNY Dance Initiative at Queens College, Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden, the JKW Collective Fund, the Changing Times Tap Initiative, The Foundation for Contemporary Art, and the Jacob’s Pillow Summer Festival.

The Knee-Heart Connection is a tap dance-theater project led by Orlando Hernández that brings together mask-work, physical theater, original music, research, and improvisation to create unique experiences of rhythm + reflection.

Lauded as “a onetime tap prodigy who’s grown into a history-mining experimentalist” (The New Yorker), Orlando Hernández is a performer, choreographer, theater-maker, musician, and writer who came up in the tap dance community in New York.

Hernández has presented his work at venues including New York Live Arts, On the Boards, Joe’s Pub, the Judson Church, and Jacob’s Pillow, and has received grants and residencies from Works & Process, the New England Foundation for the Arts, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, Yaddo, CUNY Dance Initiative, Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and Snug Harbor. He was a Fresh Tracks Artist at New York Live Arts, an Artist-in-Residence at the Center for Performance Research, and is a 2025-2028 Jerome Fellow in Dance.

Hernández is a member of the New York-based tap dance and live music company Music From the Sole, the Boston-based tap dance company Subject:Matter, directed by Ian Berg, and dances with Michela Marino Lerman’s Love Movement.

Hernández holds a B.A. in English from Yale University. He has published poems, translations, and essays in Fence, New American Writing, Nexos Magazine Online, and The Brooklyn Rail. His play La Broa’ (Broad Street), inspired by oral histories of Latino communities in Rhode Island, was produced at Trinity Repertory Company in 2024, in a run The Boston Globe called “heartwarming and magical.”

ABOUT THE CUNY DANCE INITIATIVE

The CUNY Dance Initiative (CDI) marked a decade of supporting the NYC dance field in 2024. The program was developed in response to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s 2010 report, “We Make Do,” which cited how destabilizing the shortage of affordable rehearsal space in New York City is to the dance sector. A successful pilot supporting residencies on four CUNY campuses in 2013 led to CDI’s formal launch in 2014. Since then, CDI has become a key player in New York City’s performing arts ecosystem, leading a consortium of 14 CUNY colleges and four arts organizations to host 20+ residencies for NYC choreographers and dance companies each year. In the past 11 years, CDI has granted 275 residencies to emerging and established choreographers, providing invaluable resources to artists, while enhancing CUNY students’ education and cultural experiences.

The CUNY Dance Initiative receives major support from the Howard Gilman Foundation and Mertz Gilmore Foundation. Additional support is provided by the SHS Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s Charles E. Culpeper Arts & Culture program, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the Harkness Foundation for Dance. CDI is spearheaded by the Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College.

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