CONDER/dance presents Breaking Ground 2026, a festival celebrating 19 years of innovative contemporary dance. Featuring choreographers and performers from Arizona and across the nation, this year’s festival invites audiences to experience a dynamic range of works, from intimate solo pieces to expansive ensemble performances, each exploring the boundaries of movement and storytelling. Themes of identity, memory, and collective experience unfold across two evenings, offering audiences a window into the creative perspectives and vision of the artists involved.

Who’s Afraid of Forever? is a new work created specifically to premiere at Breaking Ground 2026. This contemporary dance quartet reimagines Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? through the lens of time and memory, blending modern and Hip-Hop elements and set to a deconstructed version of OutKast’s Hey Ya!. The piece reframes Albee’s two couples as one relationship split across time—its younger and older selves coexisting in the same space. Through mirrored gestures, interwoven duets, and ensemble passages, the dancers embody temporal collapse, exposing cycles of joy, conflict, intimacy, and longing. A minimalist living room set, shifting lighting, and period-informed costumes ground the emotional world, while in-the-round staging invites audiences into multiple perspectives. The work ultimately asks: If nothing lasts forever, what makes love the exception?