Dance Bridges Festival is an international dance festival with an emphasis on building artistic and cultural exchanges between international and local dance artists, showcasing and promoting cutting-edge and exciting contemporary choreography through live performances and film screenings. The Festival also engages artists and the wider community providing dance education/training opportunities through choreographic residencies, workshops, artists’ talks and more.

The concept for such a Festival emerged through conversations with artists at the World Dance Alliance Global Summit in Angers – France in July 2014. There, several choreographers expressed a keen interest to connect with India, experience the culture, exchange with local artists and share knowledge through creative workshops with the dance community. Kolkata’s vibrant culture and rich history lays the perfect environment for such an exciting initiative; therefore dialogues to launch a festival began between Founder Director, Vanessa Mirza, Dance Alliance Kolkata and a number of international artists.

The first edition of the Festival was hosted in August 2015 with the theme ‘Talking Points in Choreography: Dialogues Across Cultures’. The Festival received an overwhelming response with enthralled audiences and excited young dance participants eagerly awaiting the next edition of the Festival. Dance Bridges Festival thereafter began to be held as biennial international dance festival in Kolkata organized by an independent organization Dance Bridges (Kolkata). This also led to an expanding leadership with the appointment of Associate Director Dam Van Huyhn and Pierre Palluet (Van Huynh Company, UK) and Chieh-Hua (Jeff) Hsieh (Anarchy Dance Theatre, Taiwan) as programmers.

The second edition of the Festival was held from 22nd-29th August 2017 with an exciting convergence of artists and wonderful participation with theme ‘New Panoramas: In You I See My Dance’. After this second edition, Dance Bridges began to host special workshops, artist talks, dance jams and other events between Festivals. The third edition of the Festival was held from 1st-5th August 2019 with the theme ‘The Sense of Intimacy’ exploring performances across the city in unconventional spaces open to the public.

In 2021-2022 Festival Director, Vanessa Mirza shifted base to the UK, and since then she has continued to direct the Festival between Kolkata and London. Due to the limitations of the pandemic, the fourth edition with the theme ‘Interconnecting’ was held in July & August 2022 as a hybrid edition. This included live events in London, Taipei and Kolkata alongside a digital programme.  The 10th anniversary celebrations of the Festival were held in Kolkata from 1st-5th August 2024 with the theme ‘Unfolding Narratives’ and received a wonderful response across venues. You can read more about the artists who attended each edition of the Festival in our Archives section.

Commencing from August 2025 the Festival is restructuring its programme under the artistic direction of Vanessa Mirza (UK/India) and her company Vanessa Mirza Creations. The Festival, is building on every successive edition with increasing opportunities for artists and dance companies, developing a wider artistic network and a deeper sense of community for the performing arts and cultural sector in India and internationally.

Our 6th edition is set to take place in Kolkata from 20th-24th August 2026 and Dance Bridges will release the open call for artist applications shortly.