Performing Arts Global Exchange

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Image: Espiral7 performed at BarnArts Feast & Field Music Series, VT, in July 2024. Credit: Alex Montaño.

Introduction

About Performing Arts Global Exchange (PAGE)
Open to presenters nationwide, the Performing Arts Global Exchange is an annually curated roster of international performing artists selected to tour to communities across the United States.

Each year, a country or region is featured with a selection of artists across multiple disciplines. The program provides fee support directly to nonprofit presenters programming artists from the roster, and presenters host both public performances and community engagements in achieving the program’s goals of cultural exchange and understanding. PAGE will support tours of performing artists from Portugal and Spain in the 2026-27 performance season.

Presenting international artists offers an opportunity to engage in the rich diversity of cultural expression throughout the world, but it also requires resources that aren’t always available. Travel expenses, visas, and routing are often barriers to presenting international artists, especially in the U.S.’s more remote communities. PAGE seeks to ease some of those burdens for U.S. presenters by working with international curators to identify a region’s most exciting, tour-ready artists and provide grant support to bring them to the U.S.

Eligibility and Schedule

Eligibility

In order to be eligible for this program a presenting organization must:

  • Be based anywhere in the United States and its territories (American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas Islands, Puerto Rico, and U.S. Virgin Islands).
  • Be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization or a unit of state or local government or Federally recognized Indian tribal government. Units of state or local government must provide a document on official letterhead to confirm status as a government entity. Fiscal sponsorship is not permitted for this program.
  • Be in good standing with Mid Atlantic Arts, with no overdue or outstanding required reports and/or grant documents.
  • For this program, a presenter is defined as an organization that regularly schedules and engages professional artists to perform before general audiences in its community and manages the related performance logistics as an ongoing and significant component of their organization’s activity.

Schedule

  • Tuesday, January 20, 2026 at 2:30pm Eastern: Roster Artist Pitch Session | Register Here
  • Monday, March 23, 2026: Signed Offer Letters due to Agents
  • April, 2026: Fill out grant form to confirm grant eligibility
  • June, 2026: Grant Award notifications sent to grantees
  • July 1, 2026-June 30, 2027: Project period for Performing Arts Global Exchange (PAGE) subsidy awards to presenters (presentations of PAGE Roster Artists must take place during this period)

Guidelines and Application

Updated Guidelines are available below: 

 

Guidelines

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A group of female musicians stand and sit holding their instruments.

Current Grantees

See the full list of engagements!

Artist Selection

How artists are selected for the PAGE roster: 

  • Nominators living and working in the region of focus, or with knowledge of the region are selected each cycle by Mid Atlantic Arts to provide artist roster suggestions. The nominators have expertise in the performing arts specifically in the selected region.
  • In addition, agents that represent artists from Spain or Portugal within the U.S. and that meet program requirements were able to nominate their artists directly for consideration in Fall of 2025.
  • Next, feedback on a selection of these potential roster artists was gathered via an online survey of U.S. presenters in November 2025.
  • Mid Atlantic Arts staff select the final roster, weighing presenter feedback and program goals.

2026-2027 Artist Roster

Birdie by Agrupación Señor Serrano (Spain)

A man kneels with a video recorder on a green carpet filming small plastic figures heading into a golf course hole.

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Image: Birdie. Credit: Pasqual Gorriz.

Birdie is a 65-minute multimedia performance with live video, objects, Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ revisited, scale models, 2000 mini animals, wars, smugglers, a massive migration and three performers handling this messy world with wit, criticism, and commitment with humankind. See it January 14-18 as part of Under The Radar Festival.

Two mirages. On the one hand, wars, droughts, massive deforestation, polluted coasts, labor exploitation, political instability, terrible health conditions, persecution, forced deportations, abusive exploitation of natural resources, depleted aquifers, food shortages… Fight for survival, political instability and environmental destruction confront us with a world in crisis. On the other hand, an apparently stable world: full supermarkets, safety on the streets, individual freedoms, protected human rights, paid work, welfare, renewable energies, and prosperity. But this world, despite its appearance of certainty, also has its contradictions. And between these two mirages, thousands of birds in constant migration, drawing impossible shapes in the sky. Incessant movement. Birds, planets, atoms, ideology, fear, waste… Everything is movement. Nothing in the cosmos stands still. Stillness does not exist, it is a chimera. There is only transformation. If it is impossible to stop an electron, what’s the point in building fences against flocks of birds?

Danzas Solemnes by Cristina Cazorla Company (Spain)

A dancer leaps through the air arms above her head and ruffled skirts flaring.

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Image: Danzas Solemnes by Cristina Cazorla Company. Credit: Vallinas 2025.

Cristina Cazorla returns to the roots of Spanish dance to create ‘Danzas Solemnes’ (‘Solemn Dances’), a show dedicated to the beauty, aesthetics, technique, and essence of the Escuela Bolera and Spanish Dance styles. 

The show recreates different landscapes inspired by the most classical Spanish tradition, typical of places such as Aranjuez, and more racially typical of Andalusia, with solemnity and elegance. The production is a 75-minute ballet in three acts in which Spanish dance, with its aesthetic versatility, takes center stage, enhanced by majestic costumes and magical lighting design.

Lucibela (Portugal)

Lucibela peers out from between two gold stage curtains.

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Image: Lucibela. Credit: Alex Tome.

Born 1986 on the island of São Nicolau and singing ever since, Lucibela’s assured, warm voice is formed from years of assimilation of the sounds of morna and coladera. She began performing with a band while at the high school, later going on to sing in hotels in Boa Vista, entertaining tourists, performing songs made famous by the great singers of Cabo Verde such as Cesária Évora, Titina, or Bana; songs that she knew by heart and made her own. In 2012, she moved to Praia, soon attracting attention in the city’s music venues, finally making a breakthrough at the 2017 Atlantic Music Expo, leading to invitations to Belgium and Lisbon, where she recorded her debut album with producer Toy Vieira, Cesária Évora’s musical director, furthering her aim of carrying on the great diva’s legacy. Now based in Lisbon, Lucibela maintains a strong relationship with her home country of Cabo Verde. 

A concert with Lucibela is a journey through the heart of Cape Verde. With her warm, soulful voice, she brings to life the rhythms of morna and coladera—songs of love, longing, and joy—inviting audiences to feel the true spirit of the islands. 

Community Engagement: Lucibela and her band are comfortable offering community engagement activities such as workshops, talkbacks, or lecture-demonstrations about their music or home country.  


Pedro Pastor y Los Locos Descalzos (Spain)

Pedro Pastor is posed seated against a red background.

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Image: Pedro Pastor y Los Locos Descalzos. Credit: Courtesy of the Artist.

At just 30 years old, and with four albums under his belt, Pedro Pastor represents and leads a new generation of singer-songwriters in Spain. Despite his young age, he has already spent over 20 years on the stage, with 700 concerts in more than 17 countries. His music straddles between Latin America and Spain, with lyrics that are a hymn to change and rebellion, to love and learning, to fusion and blending as the primary source of musical and human development. His style combines African music, cumbia, flamenco, funk, and Latin American folklore without losing the power and essence of the singer-songwriter and its message.

Pedro Pastor is one of the most popular singer-songwriters right now in Spain. The show features some of his most well-known songs, and includes a wide array of musical styles, with rhythms and influences from many parts of the world, such as cumbia, flamenco, blues, or African rhythms. Before each song he explains about the cultural context and the meaning. His songwriting is distinguished by poetic lyrics that grapple with Spain’s past, especially the legacy of the Franco dictatorship, and present-day issues such as migration, inequality, social responsibility, and the power of collective memory. 

Antonio Lizana (Spain)

Antonio is posed against a teal green background and holds a saxophone.

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Image: Antonio Lizana. Credit: Ana Solinis.

From Andalusia to New York and beyond, Antonio Lizana is one of the most celebrated representatives of new Flamenco Jazz to come out of southern Spain. As a jazz saxophonist, flamenco singer and composer, Lizana’s live shows are described as a “breathtaking journey from flamenco roots to contemporary jazz”, spun together with his soulful lyrics carrying messages of optimism and sincerity to his audiences. His quintet includes a flamenco dancer, pianist, percussionist, and bassist. Their newest album, Vishuddha, entwines the Moorish, note-bending improvisations of flamenco singing with jazz improvisation to create an exciting new sound.

Antonio Lizana has performed in more than 30 countries with his band, playing in festivals such as WOMEX, Etnosur, SXSW Austin, the London, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco Flamenco Festivals, Barcelona Voll Damn, Shanghai Jazz Fest (China), Casablanca Jazz Fest (Morocco), and Flamenco Biennale (Holland). He has been one of the only Spanish artists to record an American NPR Tiny Desk concert and has collaborated with artists such as Arturo O’Farrill and Alejandro Sanz on works that received Grammy awards. 

Community Engagement: Antonio can lead participatory workshops about the Roma culture, including both music and dance. 

Program Curators

Manage Your Grant

Learn more about managing your Performing Arts Global Exchange grant.

Opportunity & Support Type
Grant
Target Candidate
Federally-recognized Indian tribal government, Units of government, Performing Arts Presenter
Discipline
Folklife & Traditional Arts
Performing Arts
Regional Requirement
All U.S. States and Territories
DC
DE
MD
NJ
NY
PA
PR
USVI
VA
WV
Questions or need guidance?
Andrew Alness Olson
Program Director, International
Funding support provided by:
  • National endowment for the Arts America 250 logo