The 2006 festival will run October 3-December 16, opening with BAM's portion of the citywide festival honoring composer Steve Reich on his 70th birthday. Chorographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker returns with her group Rosas, performing her 1982 Fase, four movements set to the music of Steve Reich. Choreographer Akram Khan presents the American premiere of Variations for Vibes, Pianos, and Strings, set to Reich's music and accompanied by the London Sinfonietta.

Other dance highlights include Dogs, an evening-length world premiere by Sarah Michelson; the New York premiere of David Dorfman's underground, about the radical 1960s group the Weather Underground; and the U.S. premiere of Pina Bausch's Nef_s.

Music on the schedule includes Mikel Rouse's The End of Cinematics, an opera inspired by Susan Sontag's writings on film; Violet Fire, a multimedia opera by Jon Gibson about inventor Nikola Tesla; and Don Juan in Prague, a "re-conceptualization" of Mozart's Don Giovanni directed by David Chambers.

Composer and choreographer Meredith Monk presentsImpermanence, a new music-theater work, and an all-star lineup of African musicians pays tribute to Fela Kuti on Worlds AIDS Day.

Theater works include productions of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and The Tempest by Russia's Chekhov International Theatre Festival and Montreal's 4D Art multimedia collective, respectively.