Community · Street Dance · Legacy
Dance Warz Turns 20 on a 100-Year Stage
On August 8, New Jersey’s oldest organically grown street dance movement opens its 20th year at the New Brunswick Heart Festival — on one of the state’s most historic cultural landmarks.
By Dance Mogul Magazine
Dance Warz brings its street-dance showcase and battles to the New Brunswick Heart Festival. Photo: Dance Warz.
The Stage
A Century of Culture in New Brunswick
Before a single dancer takes the floor on August 8, it is worth standing still for a moment and looking up at the building behind them. State Theatre New Jersey opened its doors on December 26, 1921, as Reade’s State Theatre — a grand vaudeville and silent-film palace designed by Thomas W. Lamb, one of the most celebrated theatre architects of his era. On opening day, audiences paid twenty to thirty cents to watch live vaudeville acts and a screening of the silent western White Oak. At the time, it was the largest theater in the state.
For decades the venue lived through the golden age of American entertainment, then weathered its decline. As grand movie palaces gave way to multiplex cinemas, the theater fell into disrepair and, by the late 1970s, sat in ruins. What saved it was a community that refused to let a landmark disappear. The New Brunswick Development Corporation purchased the building in 1979, the New Brunswick Cultural Center took stewardship in 1986, and after a multimillion-dollar restoration the theater reopened as a performing arts center on April 24, 1988. A second major interior restoration followed in 2003, recovering the original color scheme and repairing the ornamental domed ceiling.
Today, State Theatre New Jersey is the largest performing arts center in Central New Jersey. Since reopening as a nonprofit, it has welcomed more than six million people through its doors and generates an estimated economic impact of more than eighteen million dollars a year for the region. In December 2021 it celebrated its 100th anniversary, restored to its Art Deco roots and recognized nationally — including a feature in the PBS series Treasures of New Jersey. The names that have crossed its stage read like a history of American performance: Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross, Tony Bennett, Ringo Starr, and countless others.
“A stage that has held a century of legends is exactly where a movement built on legacy belongs.”
The Movement
Onto That Stage Steps Dance Warz
That is the marquee that will frame the New Brunswick Heart Festival — and it is the backdrop for a milestone that matters far beyond one afternoon. This year’s festival marks the arrival of Dance Warz, and it is the first Dance Warz event of the year, opening a full season built around a single, hard-earned number: twenty.
Founded in 2006 by dancer and choreographer Anthony “Solo” Harris, Dance Warz is New Jersey’s oldest organically grown street dance event. It was never manufactured by a sponsor or franchised into existence — it grew from the ground up, out of the same street-dance culture that raised its founder. Over two decades it has become a proving ground where local hip-hop legends and rising stars share the same floor, trading jaw-dropping performances and epic head-to-head battles.
Twenty years of dancers, creators, and community. Photo: Dance Warz.
For Harris, the platform has never been only about competition. He came up as an at-risk youth whose life was redirected by dance, performed nationally with the legendary Newark group ENVY, and helped cultivate the Jersey Club energy that would ripple across the region. In 2010 he and his father co-founded Dance Mogul Magazine; in the years since, he built Solo Expression, dedicated to dance therapy for developmentally disabled and at-risk youth. Dance Warz sits at the center of that life’s work — a place where culture, opportunity, and community meet.
Why It Matters
Why This First Event of the Year Matters
Opening a 20th-anniversary year is not the same as marking a birthday. It is a statement about where a grassroots movement stands after two decades. Street dance is too often treated as something temporary — real, but fleeting. To open the anniversary year on the grounds of a century-old landmark, in partnership with State Theatre New Jersey and the New Brunswick Cultural Center, is to place that culture exactly where it deserves to be: on the main stage, in the daylight, in front of families.
The symbolism is hard to miss. The same institution that has hosted Aretha Franklin and Bruce Springsteen is now sharing its square with dancers who learned their craft in ciphers and battles. For the young people watching — some of whom will step into the free workshops that same afternoon — the message is simple and strong at once: your art form has a place here, and it has staying power.
“This isn’t just another event. This is history in motion.” — Dance Warz
Rising stars and local legends share the same floor. Photo: Dance Warz.
Free Family Fun
A Free Afternoon for the Whole Community
The New Brunswick Heart Festival is a free, family-friendly celebration of the arts, culture, and history of New Brunswick and Middlesex County. Dance Warz shares the day with a deep lineup: the five-piece New Brunswick band Warehouse Collective performing R&B, soul, and funk; headlining party band The B-Side Band; the New Brunswick Brass Band; Grupo de Danza Folklórica La Sagrada Familia; State Theatre New Jersey’s 2026 Jersey Talent winner, tap dancer John Boudouvas; the New Brunswick High School Cheerleaders; and music by DJ IZM, all hosted by Sharon Gordon and Bert Baron.
Around the stage, the square fills with an art market of local artists, craft and food vendors, free face painting, henna, balloon animals, and caricature. Families can join interactive crafts including a collaborative 3-D heart display with the Zimmerli Art Museum, a health and wellness area by Garden of Healing, and a Princeton Ballet School open house with free Discover Dance workshops for every age group. When the festival closes, the celebration moves indoors: blues legend Buddy Guy takes the State Theatre stage at 8 p.m.
Epic battles are a Dance Warz signature. Photo: Dance Warz.
Event Details
What: New Brunswick Heart Festival — free outdoor family festival
When: Saturday, August 8, 2026 · 2:00–6:00 PM
Where: Monument Square, 2 Livingston Ave, New Brunswick, NJ
Cost: FREE · Presented by State Theatre New Jersey & the New Brunswick Cultural Center
The Purpose Behind the Movement
Movement With Meaning
Dance Warz reflects the philosophy its founder built his career on: dance as more than performance — dance as purpose. That same conviction drives Solo Expression, Anthony Harris’s program dedicated to dance therapy for developmentally disabled and at-risk youth. Read the companion feature on the Solo Expression side of this milestone, and explore more street-dance stories in our Dance Styles hub. To celebrate work like this in print, visit the Dance Mogul store.
Twenty years in, Dance Warz has honored its past, and on August 8 it steps forward — onto a historic stage, in front of a new generation, opening the next chapter of a movement that was always meant to last.