
Photo by Elina Giounanli
The festival will be celebrating its 15th edition in 2019. Over two decades since its inauguration as a biennial event, then as an annual event until now, it has been a consistent highlight of Ireland’s arts calendar, delivering a distinctive programme at a high level of artistic excellence. With tenacity, it has been sharpening its own identity, defending and strengthening the influence of Dublin on the European and international scene, too, as a key place to discover challenging artistic projects.
The festival, as Dublin, is contemporary, exciting and diverse. The festival offers audiences the only chance to see some of the major international dance productions, as well as gifted Irish artists. Each year in May, it brings together artists and choreographers from around the world to share vibrant contemporary dance with audiences in Ireland.
The audiences are growing year on year. The festival is now offering about 40-50 events in 10 venues across Dublin. It gathers around 12,000 – 4,000 people indoors with ticketed admissions and outdoors for free. The intimate scale of the festival allows for spectators to get closer to the artists and their works with talks, a festival club/late meeting point downtown and also some free outdoor events.

Photo by Luca Truffarelli
The festival is curated by its Artistic Director and is by invitation only. Seeing works in person all year long is important, as is watching videos. The programme is usually locked in eight to ten months in advance, as there is then a lot of work to be achieved with embassies, international cultural organisations and private sponsors, whose support is crucial.
Find out more here: www.dublindancefestival.ie