MAGMA

Outlaw Championship Wrestling
2026-02-28 18:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York)
OCW presents Incarcerated. A full night of matches inside the steel cage!!! Grudges will be fought, titles defended, and the final matches of the Mike Magee Invitational where one wrestler will win a World Title opportunity. Get your tickets before they are gone!!
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Rock Show benefit for the Lily Jean Fund
2026-03-06 19:00 - 22:30
Come out and support! $15-20 at the door. Proceeds go to the Lily Jean Fund
featuring:
Rawstrum
Cold Start
Horsehands
Matt Farley

Dance on Canvas
2026-03-27 18:00 - 20:00
​“Dance on Canvas”
Friday, March 27, 6:00-8:00 Reception & Sale
​Carey McKinley moved to Gloucester in 2023 keen to develop ​her visual art practice and discover where it meets ​her dance practice. Taking a hiatus from teaching, ​she opened ​her first-ever visual art studio in 2024 on Main St. The upcoming Reception & Sale features McKinley’s recent work, alongside fellow dancer/visual artist, Sophia Dunzelman. Please join us to celebrate how the dancing body brings dynamic energy and life to the canvas. Free and open to the public. Works on view during studio hours–magma.center for more info.

Mandala Dance
2026-03-28 19:00 - 21:30
An exciting experimental experience with live music, dancing, singing, spoken word and community art making, facilitated by Lisa Bouchie and Jon Holland.
$15-30 sliding scale, at the door or buy online here

Pouvwa
2026-03-29 14:00 - 17:30
Pouvwa/workshop and performance – JEAN APPOLON EXPRESSIONS
Jean Appolon Expressions (JAE) is a Haitian folkloric and contemporary-infused dance organization that cultivates hope and healing to foster more expressive and socially just communities through professional performances, education, cultural experiences, and the celebration of the joy of movement for all.
Program at MAGMA on Sunday March 29
2:00-3:30 WORKSHOP FOR ALL • Experience the visceral restorative power of Haitian folkloric dance, drumming, and community building. All-ages and all-levels are welcome.
4:00-5:30 PERFORMANCE & Q&A • Explore Pouvwa, JAE’s multidisciplinary repertory on power, culture, and healing, and learn about the new JAE Dance Center in Boston, the Summer Dance Institute, and the Natural Connections Retreat in Dominican Republic.
Sliding scale $15-$25 / each event. (kids $10)
CLICK TO BUY TICKETS FOR THE WORKSHOP
CLICK TO BUY TICKETS FOR THE PERFORMANCE
MAGMA, 11 Pleasant Street, Gloucester, MA (elevator access 186 Main St.)
This event is funded in part by generous grants from the Gloucester Cultural Council and the Rockport Cultural Council, local agencies which are supported by Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.

Contra Dance
2026-04-10 19:00 - 21:30 | MAGMA, 11 Pleasant St., Gloucester, MA, 01930, United States
Easy to Learn New England Style Contra, Square & Circle Dances
with Caller Rose Sheehan, and musicians Adrienne Howard on fiddle and Gary Dolinsky on guitar.
$15-25 sliding scale per person, notaflof, under 16 free
BUY TIX ONLINE Tix will also be available at the door.
Beginners welcome, come one come all!

Contact Improvisation Jam
2026-04-11 13:00 - 15:00
Our monthly Contact Improvisation Jam consists of a half hour warm-up and skills practice, followed by open improvisation. All experience levels are welcome! This month we have guest musicians Sarah Blacker and Aaron Katz.
$10-20 suggested donation SIGN UP ONLINE or at the door
Musician bios:
Singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, board-certified music therapist and licensed mental health counselor Sarah Blacker, together with her husband Aaron Zev Katz (both from Salem, MA) —a spiritual song leader, singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, music teacher & producer —bring their award-winning original music and interactive healing experiences to sacred spaces throughout New England. Both seasoned international touring and recording artists, they understand the nuances of a shared live music experience. As healers and empaths, they understand the deeper needs of humanity and have cultivated a path that allows them a marriage, both literally and figuratively, of their performing and healing worlds.
“Contact Improvisation is an evolving system of movement initiated in 1972 by American choreographer Steve Paxton. The improvised dance form is based on the communication between two moving bodies that are in physical contact and their combined relationship to the physical laws that govern their motion—gravity, momentum, inertia. The body, in order to open to these sensations, learns to release excess muscular tension and abandon a certain quality of willfulness to experience the natural flow of movement. Practice includes rolling, falling, being upside down, following a physical point of contact, supporting and giving weight to a partner.”
“Contact improvisations are spontaneous physical dialogues that range from stillness to highly energetic exchanges. Alertness is developed in order to work in an energetic state of physical disorientation, trusting in one’s basic survival instincts. It is a free play with balance, self-correcting the wrong moves and reinforcing the right ones, bringing forth a physical/emotional truth about a shared moment of movement that leaves the participants informed, centered, and enlivened.”
—early definition by Steve Paxton and others, 1970s,
from CQ Vol. 5:1, Fall 1979

MAGMA Dance Company: Here Together Now
2026-04-12 17:00 - 18:30
A collaborative dance concert featuring Dawn Pratson, Sophia Dunzelman, Carey McKinley, Anna Kharaz, Kim Motylewski, Cynthia Williams, Zoe Ulrich, Hannah Tupper, Erika Sutter, Teresa Tobin, Donna Prezzano, Raquel del Rosario, and Sarah Slifer Swift.
Sunday April 12, 5pm
Tix $10-20 sliding scale BUY ONLINE

SING
2026-04-17 18:15 - 19:30
SING meets every 3rd Friday of the month from 6:15-7:30pm
Led by Lisa Bouchie, SING uses a variety of improvisational structures to jump right into the joy of singing with others. No musical experience necessary, all are welcome!
Suggested donation $10-15, pay at the door, no advance registration required

Drag Trivia
2026-04-17 20:30 - 22:00
Get ready to slay with drag queens and show off your trivia skills in this fabulous live showdown!

Join us as Closet Case Parties and Lady Carmen Brûlée collab for a night of drag trivia and a dance party. With performances by Carmen herself, Kylie Karma, Hunter Down, Idaho Voila and Dr. Viola Voila!
Test your skills as we quiz your knowledge on general pop culture!
Grab your friends and see who can win! Prizes include cash, tickets to Carmen’s upcoming ‘Mamma Mia!’ show at Club Cafe on April 30th, Tickets to Closet Case’s spring show on April 18th and more! You don’t want to miss out!
GET TIX

Matt Jenson: Unmarked Routes
2026-04-18 19:30 - 21:00
Matt Jenson | Unmarked Routes…through sonic hypnogogy
Solo Ambient Neo-Classical Dub Piano with Electronics and the MAGMA Dance Company
Luxuriating in atmosphere and drone-tones of awe and fascination, where thoughts and feelings of division have no safe harbor. A low-lit bath of sound, where iridescent, gauzy melodies collide in slow motion with decolonized electronic soundscapes, a piano, hushed voices and kaleidoscopic dancers, with the lucid assurance that a beautiful outcome will bloom, if together we direct our attention to it.
Matt Jenson has been on the piano faculty at Berklee College of Music for about 2 decades where he also teaches a class on Bob Marley. Many in and near Gloucester may have seen the Berklee Bob Marley ensemble at the Cut that Matt directs. He has toured and recorded internationally with the jazz-fusion reggae band, Groundation and performs locally and regionally with his reggae and Latin bands (Combo Sabroso and Mix Up Mix Up respectively). All of Matt’s music is informed by jazz, blues, Afro-Cuban and reggae styles and this brand new project, UNMARKED ROUTES, maintains these influences but with a completely new sound and feel. The music is at once spacious, sophisticated and beautiful with the intention to take listeners on a sonic journey that is at times gentle and quiet and at other times subtlety intense and rhythmic. It’s what you might hear if Brian Eno jammed with Igor Stravinsky, King Tubby and Sade at Burning Man!
Matt will be performing new compositions and music from his soon-to-be-released double album illuminated by the MAGMA Dance Company and spectacular ‘screen art’ videos.
Tickets: sliding scale $15-35, buy online or at the door
*when buying tickets online: All tickets are will call, just give your name at the door. No need to fill in names of all attendees, you can proceed to checkout without that step.

True Story Theater
2026-04-19 16:00 - 17:30
True Story Theater is an improvisational physical ensemble honoring people’s lived experience, including people who are especially vulnerable in these times.
In their MAGMA debut, they will work with stories of neurodiversity and invisible disabilities. Laugh, cry, and gain insights as True Story’s actors and musicians empathetically embody whatever is shared. All are welcome!
Tix $15-25 sliding scale BUY TICKETS
True Story Theater is a nonprofit theater company that offers over 50-75 improvisational performances, skills training, and Active Bystander workshops a year for a wide array of clients in the greater Boston area and beyond. Our mission is to promote social healing through theatre by building empathy, respect, and understanding in the honoring of true life stories.
In addition to offering monthly public shows, True Story’s work has served hospitals, universities, civic and community organizations, human rights commissions, religious communities, the LGBTQIA+ community, seniors, teen leaders, cancer survivors, activists, philanthropists, business leaders and more. We also perform for private individuals — for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, and other important rites of passage and life events.
True Story Theater performs and teaches a style of improvisational theater called Playback Theatre. Volunteers from the audience are invited and helped to share what’s important in their lives. Actors listen deeply then spontaneously transform the stories into theater, portraying the heart of what they heard using dialogue, movement, music and song. From this simple interaction, people laugh, cry and experience surprising insights.
Our events create a respectful atmosphere where every voice can be heard and any story told — however ordinary or extraordinary, difficult or joyful. True Story Theater offers audiences fresh perspectives, deeper connections, and a renewed appreciation for our common humanity.

When the People Could Fly: a Somovement Journey
2026-04-24 18:00 - 20:30
Facilitated by Hadley Mays
Trance Dance, experiential anatomy and somatic movement for an integrated
body-mind and soul journey
This experience situates itself within a perspective, that there is no separation between the physical and the spiritual dimensions: the human experience is a spiritual experience, and the human body is both the material of and gateway to infinite dimensions of spirit and cosmos. We can navigate these dimensions through ecstatic and kinetic states of consciousness. Come fly with me: flight as dance, as soul venture, spirit journey and kinetic trance. Dive into a place where your vast interiority opens into the deep space of manifold intelligence.
The Practice
Begins with somatic movement to prepare our bodyminds for trance and the extended ranges of our somatic perceiving. Then we Trance Dance, a blindfolded ritual dance process using breath, movement, and rhythm. Trance Dance is a co-creative call to action with the sacred spirit world; our intention sets a course, our soul unfolds.
Cost: $25-40 sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds –
RESERVE NOW
The Facilitator

Hadley Mays is a certified practitioner of the Trance Dance ritual, created by Wilbert Alix and Frank Natale from collected shamanic traditions and practices spanning over 40,000 years. She has lived, worked, trained, healed and played in altered states, trance and the visionary realms throughout my life in many different countries, cultures, and contexts.
Brief Bio
Hadley Mays is an interdisciplinary theater & movement artist, teacher of contemporary performance, and workshop facilitator, and I am currently on faculty at Boston Conservatory. She holds an MFA in Theater and Contemporary Performance, graduate studies in Psychology and Counseling, and many years of experience and independent research in culture, ritual, and performance studies.
Other details: Please wear comfortable clothing you can move in and something that you can use as a blindfold. Parking in Gloucester is free after 6pm, and there is a municipal lot catty cornered from MAGMA.

The Crystal
2026-04-26 16:00 - 18:00 | MAGMA, 11 Pleasant St., Gloucester, MA, 01930, United States
The Crystal is a contemplative dance practice using Authentic Movement, in which the mover becomes the oracle and the witnesses reflect and refract using silence, sound, movement and automatic writing. A profound experience of vulnerability, intimacy and connection.
suggested donation $10-20, pay at the event

Latin Dance Social
2026-05-03 18:00 - 20:00
MAGMA welcomes Andres Giraldo from Salsa y Control dance studio and company for a one hour beginner salsa class followed by practice time. Lesson starts at 6pm, open dancing time is from 7-8pm.
Entry is $10-15, sliding scale – BUY ONLINE NOW, or at the door
MAGMA is on the top floor of the Brown Building at 11 Pleasant Street in Gloucester, a beautiful historic ballroom with ocean views.
All levels welcome, no partner required. Feel free to bring drinks as we do not sell any beverages.

Time Travelers Ball
2026-05-09 19:00 - 22:00
Please join us for MAGMA’s annual fundraiser gala with live performances, participatory dance lessons, and festive refreshments.
Attire: 1920-1940 speakeasy fashion
Doors open at 7pm, programming starts at 7:30pm
$50-100 suggested donation per person, BUY ONLINE
Highlights:
– learn The Charleston and 1930s circle dance “The Big Apple”
– dance performances to live music
– sultry, speakeasy ambiance; signature cocktails and yummy desserts
– support MAGMA’s artistic programming, accessible pricing, and youth scholarship fund

Tango-Salsa-Cha Cha
2026-05-17 17:00 - 19:00
Learn some easy dance moves with Sarah Slifer Swift at MAGMA and then dance to tango, salsa, and cha-cha music played live by the Walker Creek Saxophone Quartet (David Benjamin, Marsha Jamison, Frank Freedman, and Jamie Klopotoski).

$10 suggested donation at the door

All ages and abilities welcome!
