Annual Village Halloween Costume Ball

The Village Halloween Costume Ball is an annual Halloween celebration of theater, music, dance, aerial performance, cabaret and food, with flamboyant costumes required or formal wear. It is staged by Theater for the New City, an East Village theater whose executive artistic director is Crystal Field, and 2026 marks its fiftieth incarnation of a tradition begun in 1974. A free outdoor festivity with performances and a children's costume contest gives way to indoor festivities across the theater's four-theater complex, with cabaret acts, ballroom dancing by Art Lillard's Heavenly Big Band and Mr. Pablo's Latin Dance Band, an aerial dance concert by Caytha Jentis, and dining in the Witch's Cauldron pop-up restaurant. The evening culminates in a costume contest hosted by Crystal Field, whose winners receive prizes including Moet & Chandon Champagne and a year's free pass to TNC.