Celebrating the legacy of dance of all cultures in professional and community practice with a focus on diversity and equality, BOLD festival is back following its successful debut in 2017.
BOLD II will see five days of workshops, performances, talks, forums and film screenings that will bring a range of professional and community dance artists to Canberra.
Alongside enabling dance artists to come together, it will also allow followers of dance to experience both the joy and the power of dance to entertain, provoke thought and transform.
โWeโve got a lot of female speakers and performers, women of colour โฆ strong cultural diversity and strong First Nation program,โ BOLD festival Director and Curator Liz Lea told Canberra Daily.
While Lea said the event is primarily for mature audiences, itโs suitable for attendees of all ages with a passion for dance.
โThere is a focus on older performers but what I love about that is their grandchildren come and watch them perform,โ she said.
โBOLD is somewhere people say โoh look, this is somewhere we can present our work or try out some ideas as older performersโ, and this to me is really important.โ
BOLD II will see a range of beautiful experiences take place throughout Canberraโs national cultural institutions including the National Library of Australia, National Gallery of Australia and National Portrait Gallery as well as more intimate sites like Gorman Arts Centre.
Lea said there was an immense amount of behind-the-scenes work involved to create such a comprehensive program.
โItโs been about two or three years of hard work,โ Lea said. โThe last one ran in 2017, and weโre already planning for our next one in 2021 โฆ thereโs lots and lots of planning.
โThis wouldnโt be possible if it wasnโt in Canberra โฆ If youโre in London it would be very difficult to get a lot of the big institutions together to allow little pop-up performances,โ she said.
BOLD II will run 13-17 March at various venues across Canberra with both ticketed and free events throughout; theboldfestival.com
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