Dance Performances at Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival

Blue Lapis Light: 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Performances are approximately 30 minutes. (Best viewed from the Liberty and Penn avenues extension, near Gateway Center T station.) Reed Dance II: 5 p.m. Saturday at Stanwix stage at Gateway Center. “Tracks// Where Will Dance Take You?”: Noon Wednesday at Dollar Bank main stage, Point State Park. (A collaboration between Green Street Studios in Cambridge, Mass., and Jessica Marino of JAMpress management in Pittsburgh.) TRAF Dance Battles at the Stanwix Stage: Registration will be noon to 1 p.m. June 11. Preliminary round for the open dance category will be 1 p.m.; Breaking preliminary round will be 2 p.m. Competition to follow. Information: Performances are free. More at traf.trustarts.org.

One of the highlights of the dance programming at this year’s Dollar Bank Three Rivers Arts Festival, a production of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, is Blue Lapis Light — an aerial dance troupe from Austin, Texas.

But to see it in action, you’ll have to look up.

At 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday, the group of four artists will make its Pittsburgh debut in a new work, “Stardust.” But rather than perform it on stage or in the streets, dancers will rappel down the facade of Fifth Avenue Place, Downtown. The production is a special presentation of the Pittsburgh Dance Council’s 2017-18 season.

“So many people have corrected me,” arts festival director Sarah Aziz says when she tells them about this unconventional performance. Many think she means to say that they’ll be dancing in the building, instead of on it. “It really piques people’s interest.”

For Sally Jacques, Blue Lapis Light’s founding artistic director, these sorts of gravity-defying endeavors aren’t just about eliciting “oohs” and “ahs” from the crowd. Her work is often woven with social, political or spiritual themes inspired by nature and humanity. (The company’s name is a reference to Gandhi’s description of meditation, through which the soul fuses with eternal consciousness to become blue light.)

“It isn’t about tricks. It’s really about