Summer Sway

JUL 12 – AUG 16, 2024
A celebration of hip hop’s living legacy, with free performances Friday evenings

Attendance

Summer Sway is free and open to the public. Free ticket reservations are encouraged but not required.

The Summer Sway installation on the Plaza is open all week, with performances Fridays from 5 pm to sunset.

Join our mailing list for updates about participating artists.

About this program

Join us for Summer Sway as DJs, musical artists, dancers, and other performers take over The Shed’s outdoor Plaza in July and August, creating community through the joy and liberation we find in music and dance.

We’re celebrating the roots of hip hop and digging into the art forms and styles it has inspired, from breaking and graffiti to DJing and MCing. On Friday evenings, some of the city’s fiercest DJs, dance collectives, and artists will bring a party to the Plaza with free performances centering queer, trans, and BIPOC community-based and community-born art. Artists and collectives will include José Parlá, Clave Y Cuba, Papi Juice, Soul Summit, Ladies of Hip-Hop, Quiana Parks and guests artists for a dance cypher, DJ Perly, and other special guests.

Every day of the week, explore our public art installation—including a playlist, a graffiti artwork by QuOne, and a timeline of hip hop’s living history by Rakia Seaborn—that highlights the movement’s global social impact. The installation was produced by Neon Fab Studios.

West Side Fest

The performance on Friday, July 12 (artist to be announced) is part of West Side Fest, a celebration of arts and culture on the West Side of Manhattan organized by the West Side Cultural Network. Learn more about West Side Fest.

Schedule

JUL 12
West Side Fest
Quiana Parks
A dance cypher and exhibition battle led by Mario from Cypherbreak with breaker Emily “Powerflow” Dion and DJ Anthony Laid

JUL 19
Papi Juice with guest DJ Kenni Javon and guest dance performer Niala

JUL 26
DJ Perly
Uptown Vinyl Supreme

AUG 2
Michele Byrd-Mcphee, Ladies of Hip-Hop

AUG 9
Soul Summit

AUG 16
Clave Y Cuba feat. Shie Moreno and Román Díaz
Marcus Logan
José Parlá

Artists

A portrait of artist and DJ Quiana Parks in slightly three quarters profile turning to look directly at us through yellow-tinted glasses. Quiana is a Black woman with short hair bleached blonde and wears a white tank top. She poses against a tan, neutral background.
Courtesy the artist.
Quiana Parks
Three members of the art collective Papi Juice, all people of color, lounge on a grassy amphitheatre-like structure. They wear casual summery clothes: tshirts, shorts, baseball caps.
Photo: Guarionex Rodriguez, Jr. Courtesy Papi Juice.
Papi Juice
A portrait of Puerto Rican DJ Perly. She has short brown hair parted toward the right side of her head and looks at us sideways at an angle. She holds one hand up under her chin pensively, and wears a white t-shirt with an illustration of the Statue of Liberty.
Courtesy DJ Perly.
DJ Perly
The three DJs of Uptown Vinyl Supreme, Sunny Cheeba, Buddy, and Josh Hubi, stand together in a DJ booth. They smile and raise their hands, holding headphones and tambourines.
Photo: Mamadi. Courtesy The Shed.
Uptown Vinyl Supreme
A portrait of dancer Michele Byrd-McPhee, a Black woman with light brown skin who crouches against a white background. She wears an all-white outfit with her hair in a round bun on top of her head. She smiles excitedly and holds her hands up to her face, peering through her fingers like a mask.
Photo: Michele Byrd-McPhee.
Michele Byrd-Mcphee
Emily “Powerflow” Dion
JUL 12
DJ Anthony Laid
JUL 12
Mario, Cypherbreak
JUL 12
Mario started breaking in 2007 and traveled all around the world with his crew (lionzofzion) to represent their name and country. In 2016, he founded Cypherbreak while living with friends. Since 2020, Cypherbreak has been the name for their open practices held in Brooklyn. Mario created Cypherbreak to preserve his core belief in providing the community with a free, open, and safe space for all breakers.
Quiana Parks
JUL 12
Quiana Parks is a multifaceted artist who excels in both fine and performance art. As a fine artist, she creates captivating works on canvas, exploring themes of resilience and beauty with her unique style. In her performances, Parks brings her art to life, seamlessly blending music, visuals, and storytelling to create immersive experiences that leave a lasting impact on audiences. Whether she’s spinning tracks as a DJ or incorporating live painting into her sets, Parks’s talents transcend traditional boundaries, redefining what it means to be an artist in today’s world.
Papi Juice
JUL 19
Papi Juice is an art collective that aims to affirm and celebrate the lives of queer and trans people of color. Structured around curated events, Papi Juice lives at the intersection of art, music, fashion, and nightlife. Since its inception in 2013, the collective has been changing the face of nightlife in New York City and beyond with intentional platforms for artists of color including panels, artist residencies, performances, and, of course, fabled DJ sets and all-night parties. Papi Juice has featured artists and DJs such as Kelsey Lu, Juliana Huxtable, MikeQ, Lady Shaka, Helado Negro, and Yaeji. Papi Juice has also partnered with institutions such as the Brooklyn Museum, MoMA PS1, Planned Parenthood, Creative Time, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, and partners like Coach, Opening Ceremony, Twitter, Calvin Klein, and HBO.
DJ Perly
JUL 26

DJ Perly is a highly respected Puerto Rican, Bronx-born DJ, turntablist, and producer from New York City. Perly is renowned for her dynamic performances that showcase deep musical knowledge and precise manipulation of music. She made history in 2017 as the first woman to win the DMC US Finals DJ Battle and repeated this feat in 2022, becoming the first and only woman to win two DMC USA National titles. Perly’s achievements include placing fourth in the 2017 DMC World Finals in London, the highest ever for a Woman, and third in the 2022 DMC World Beat Juggle Finals. She is a six-time DMC World Finalist, 2016 DMC NYC Regional Champion, and three-time Freestyle Monday Champion, as well as a member of the Heavy Hitters DJ Crew.

DJ Perly’s success is a true testament to talent, dedication, and perseverance; challenging stereotypes and proving gender is no barrier to excellence. She continues to influence the DJ community globally, promoting inclusivity and diversity. Perly has performed at prestigious venues worldwide including Carnegie Hall, and has performed alongside with legendary DJs like DJ Jazzy Jeff, Skratch Bastid and also opened for influential legendary acts such as De La Soul and Monie Love. Her DJ skills have been featured in Levi’s campaigns, and she’s been recognized with awards including DJane Mag’s Best Scratch DJ Award, a nomination for Global Spin Awards Turntablist of the Year.

Uptown Vinyl Supreme
JUL 26
Uptown Vinyl Supreme is a DJ collective and community organization born in the Bronx, NYC paying homage to the analog roots of music, party and dance culture. Records have the power to uplift, inspire, and heal the people. Friends and lovers of vinyl, Sunny Cheeba, Buddy, and Josh Hubi take this responsibility seriously and continue to explore progressive ways in which this power can reach audiences all over the world.
Michele Byrd-Mcphee
AUG 2

A 2023 Bessie Award winner for Outstanding Service to the Field, Michele Byrd-Mcphee is a street dancer, an arts activist, and tireless advocate for girls and women who works to decolonize hip hop culture along gender, sex, and cultural and sociohistorical racial lines. With a BS from Temple University and an MS from Drexel University, Byrd-Mcphee has worked in different sectors of the entertainment industry, having been a production coordinator at Brooklyn Academy of Music and a senior music coordinator at Late Night with Seth Meyers.

Awarded the 2020 Integrated Arts Residency Fellowship at University of Wisconsin-Madison, Byrd-McPhee created and taught her course Hip Hop, Women, and the World. Byrd-McPhee has also served as a grant panelist for the prestigious McKnight Foundation, DanceNYC, and served as a voting member of the Bessie Award Committee. Presently, Byrd-McPhee continues her 20-year commitment as executive director for Ladies of Hip-Hop and artistic director of LDC (LOHH Dance Collective).

Soul Summit
AUG 9
Marcus Logan
AUG 16
Marcus Logan is a multidisciplinary brand architect, music producer and DJ with a passion for polyphonic rhythms and deep grooves in the keys of broken beat, baile funk, jazz, soul, funk, world, and house music.
Ivan “Shie” Moreno, Clave Y Cuba
AUG 16

Ivan “Shie” Moreno was born in Centro Habana, immersed in the vibrant rhythms of Cuban music and dance. His upbringing sparked a lifelong passion for Afro-Cuban musical traditions, leading him to establish Clave Y Cuba, the only nonprofit dedicated to celebrating and documenting Afro-Cuban music across the Cuban Diaspora. In 2021, Ivan formed Clave Y Cuba’s New York–based collective of the culture’s leading musicians and dancers.

Known as “El Pintor” in the New York rumba community, Moreno combines his musical prowess with a deep visual art career. Moreno remains a dedicated musician, artist, and cultural leader committed to sharing the richness of Afro-Cuban musical traditions with global audiences.

Román Díaz
AUG 16
José Parlá
AUG 16
A rendering of an installation artwork that includes a central circular stage and low, bleacher-like seating that encircles the stage. The stage is decorated with a swirl of bright green, yellow, and blue colors.
About the Installation

Summer Sway’s Plaza installation, titled Reverb, represents a layering of many ideas, artistic contributions, and collaborative iterations. The form mimics a sound wave visualization, with the various arced elements evoking the wave as it expands and reverberates from a central source. Here, instead of a burst of sound, the energy emanates from a central dance floor. The installation includes seating for an audience to take in the activity around them, not only this summer’s music and dancing but a timeline of hip hop’s history engraved in the installation’s elements that encircle the dance floor, as well. This multidimensional presentation of sculpture, sound, movement, and history celebrates the evolution of hip hop and breaking, tracing the past into the present in NYC, where hip hop was born.

Produced by Alec Burney and Sean Billy Kizy (Neon Fab Studios) and fabricated by Fabhaus Beacon Inc. Rendering courtesy Neon Fab Studios.

Installation Creative Team

A headshot of Sean Billy Kizy, a queer Middle Eastern American, who has curly hair that falls over their forehead and is shaved close on the sides. Sean smiles broadly without opening their mouth, and has a beard. Sean wears a deep blue collared shirt and looks directly at us.
Sean Billy Kizy. Photo: The Artist. Courtesy Sean Billy Kizy.
Sean Billy Kizy
A portrait of graffiti artist Qu One seen from the shoulders up against a dark background. Qu One is a white man with short salt and pepper hair. He wears glasses looking intently, directly at us. He wears a gray tshirt.
Courtesy Qu One.
Qu One
A portrait of Rakia Seaborn, a Black woman who wears a colorful printed v-neck blouse and raises one eyebrow at us playfully.
Photo: Ethan Baldwin.
Rakia Seaborn
Sean Billy Kizy
Sean Billy Kizy, RA, is a queer Middle Eastern American artist, architect, and large-scale art fabrication specialist. They founded Neon Fab Studios to support artists to realize their work on a large-scale while expanding their personal community driven artistic practice.
Qu One
A Bronx native, Qu One has been writing graffiti for over 30 years, and also makes music as Qu.One. Qu One was born in the late ‘70s and grew up in the Bronx, home of the famous “Morris Park Crew” graffiti crew. It was a classic NYC “melting pot” neighborhood, where everyone’s parents came from other places and kids roamed the streets. After seeing graffiti everywhere growing up and trying it out for himself, he was hooked. Qu One sprayed his first paint tag at 12 and hasn’t looked back. Fine tuning his craft, he has made friends globally and is part of worldwide graffiti crews such as KTC, IMOK, TFS, and SW. You can also find Qu.One on all streaming platforms, as he also produces original music in various styles.
Rakia Seaborn
A native of Detroit, Rakia Seaborn is a writer, choreographer, educator, and performer whose work has appeared at JACK, Dixon Place, La Mama E.T.C., The Tank, AUNTS, chashama, and Brooklyn Studios for Dance. Seaborn has worked with Kathy Westwater, Dianne McIntyre, Rashaun Mitchell, Jodi Melnick, and Meta-Phys Ed. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2007, earning a BA in dance with a concentration in choreography, and in 2014, she gained an MFA in dance from Sarah Lawrence College. Seaborn teaches movement for Trinity College’s Experimental Performing Arts Program at La Mama, Etc as well as Dance History Through A Political Lens and MFA Thesis Writing at Sarah Lawrence College. She is a 2018 Mertz Gilmore Late Stage Creative Stipend recipient. Seaborn’s latest work, A RUIN, had its world premiere at JACK in May of 2022.

Program Credits

Shed Program Team
Dejá Belardo, Assistant Curator, Civic Programs and Visual Arts
Darren Biggart, Director of Civic Programs
Christal Ferreira, Program Manager, Civic Programs and Visual Arts
Ben Young, Production Manager
Chris Genovese, Production Manager, Events/Rentals
Production Credits
The installation was produced by Neon Fab Studios.

Accessibility

The Shed’s Plaza is wheelchair accessible. For questions or other requests, visit the Accessibility page, email accessibility@theshed.org, or call (646) 455-3494.

Location and dates

This event takes place in the Plaza.

July 12 – August 16
The Summer Sway installation on the Plaza is open all week, with performances Fridays, 5 pm to sunset.

The Shed’s Plaza is located on the east side of The Shed, where the High Line meets Hudson Yards at 30th Street. It is also accessible via Hudson Yards Public Square. View The Shed on a map.

For information about accessibility and arriving at The Shed, visit our Accessibility page.

Thank you to our partner

The Shed is connected by
In The Works