After a summer void that stretched for years, upon the demise of the Mostly Mozart, Lincoln Center, and Out of Doors festivals, dance at the brutalist arena is finally back. For its first week, the indoors Contemporary Dance Festival and the free, outdoors Dance Encounters stretch the African diaspora to fantastical limits. At the Hearst Plaza, New York voguer Omari Wiles and his Ballet Afrik adapt their Paris is Burning tribute show to daylight, while Ogemdi Ude treats the majorettes of Historically Black Colleges not as sidekicks to the marching bands but as the main story. At Alice Tully Hall, Basil-based, Brooklyn-born Jeremy Nedd comes home. His rock to rock… aka how magnolia was taken for granite reclaims the move—helicopter arms, rolling hips— that rap star Milly Rock sued a video game company for stealing. It belongs to The People again, or at least to this casual quartet of cooly mumbly dancers. Inspired by a bridge she crossed for many years where she lives, in Seville, the Ghanaian-Jamaican-British dancer Yinka Esi Graves “injects the spirit of flamenco into a very personal show.” The solo, The Disappearing Act, traces her family’s long, invisible history elliptically. —Apollinaire Scherr