Five Horizons for Bolzano Danza 2026

The festival’s guiding theme is Orizons – the Horizon: a space of tension and openness, a bold invitation to shift our perspective. Throughout this journey, the audience is at the heart of the experience. Visitors are invited to move, participate, and experience the city through a different lens, including through participatory projects, unconventional events, and the large-scale urban celebration of ExtraDanza.

To help navigate this rich programme, we have identified five thematic horizons. They are not rigid categories, but invitations to explore the festival from different perspectives. Many performances could belong to more than one. Feel free to ignore them entirely—or use them as a starting point for creating your own journey through the festival.

Dance as a Living Heritage: Movement Across Generations

The history of dance is not a static archive, but a living legacy that each body reactivates, transforms, and brings into the present. Several works in this year’s programme revisit landmark creations, influential figures, and artistic lineages that have shaped contemporary dance, showing how movement can evolve over time while retaining its expressive power.

Don’t miss:

Louise Lecavalier – danses vagabondes
Rosas / Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker – Rosas danst Rosas
laGeste / Stereo48 – Badke(remix)
CCN / Aterballetto – MicroDanze / Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda

The Body as a Place of Boundaries, Representation, and Transformation

The body is never neutral. It carries stories, wounds, desires, social norms, and possibilities. The artists in this horizon explore questions of representation, challenge dominant aesthetic conventions, and create space for identities, presences, and forms of beauty that are too often overlooked. Here, dance becomes a way of bringing what is usually pushed to the margins into the spotlight.

Don’t miss:

Chiara Bersani / corpoceleste C.C.00# – Michel – The Animals I Am
Mohamed Toukabri – Every-Body-Knows-What-Tomorrow-Brings-And-We-All-Know-What-Happened-Yesterday
Daniele Ninarello / Codeduomo – RISE
Camilla Parini – Je suisse (or not)
laGeste / Stereo48 – Badke(remix)

Bolzano as a Stage Without Boundaries

Bolzano Danza extends beyond the theatre, transforming the city and its surroundings into a living stage. Castles, squares, bunkers, museums, libraries, parks, historic landmarks, and everyday urban spaces all become part of the festival experience. Dance does not simply occupy these places—it moves through them, reveals new dimensions, and reshapes them for the duration of each performance. Watching a performance also means discovering Bolzano from a new perspective.

Don’t miss:

CCN / Aterballetto at Castel Mareccio
Anna Basti – Le classique c’est chic! in Piazza Walther and Parco Berloffa
Cult of Magic – FEAR OF THE DARK at Bunker H
Michele Di Stefano & Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch – Veduta_Atlante Mediterraneo
Francesca Ziviani – État Sauvage at Parco delle Semirurali
Compagnie Beaux-Champs – VIFS + Baroc’Bal in Piazza Alto Adige

Where the Body Meets Science, Imagination, and New Languages

Contemporary dance is also a space for experimentation and research. In this horizon, the body engages with augmented reality, sound, image, archives, technological devices, and scientific inquiry. Not to replace physical presence, but to deepen our understanding of it—to explore how movement is transmitted, transformed, documented, and continually reinvented.

Don’t miss:

Margherita Landi & NOI Techpark – Landi’s Cube: Inside the Code
Cult of Magic – FEAR OF THE DARK
Michele Di Stefano & Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch – Veduta_Atlante Mediterraneo
Industria Indipendente – Quixote_A rose is not a rose
Camilla Parini – Je suisse (or not)

The Festival as a Shared Experience

Bolzano Danza is not just something to watch. It is a space to enter, to meet others, to experience, and to take part. ExtraDanza, workshops, artist talks, BoDA, and participatory projects invite audiences to step beyond the role of passive spectator and experience the festival as a place of connection and shared discovery.

Don’t miss:

ExtraDanza
Compagnie Olivier Dubois – Les Mémoires d’une seigneure
Anna Basti – Le classique c’est chic!
Workshop SKI
BoDA / Meet the Artists
ABC – Allegra Brigata Cinematica – PlayJam
Daniele Ninarello – RISE

Five Horizons, One Festival.

Explore the full programme, and share the experience with the people you love.

We look forward to welcoming you to Bolzano Danza 2026!