Coastal Dance Festival marks 15th anniversary with return to in-person performances

Showcasing Indigenous stories, song, and dance from BC and around the world; the 15th annual Coastal Dance Festival is being held in-person this year for the first time since the start of COVID-19.

“There’s a real closeness that is coming together with the community that I haven’t noticed in the past,” admits Dancers of Damelahamid artistic and executive director Margaret Grenier.  “I think it’s just how much we appreciate the practices and how much we really were impacted by the pandemic.”

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The 2022 festival will highlight the diversity of northern Indigenous artists.

“We’re really excited to be partnering with the Nordic Bridges this year,” she says.  “So, we have six Sámi artists that are coming from Norway and Sweden.  It’s the first time we are going to be hosting these artists at our festival.  We are also going to be bringing in artists that have a focus on our youth, our Indigenous youth here in Canada.”

“The conversation started before the pandemic when we began to make a connection with Indigenous artists coming from the Nordic area,” Grenier explains.  “There are a lot of parallels with the Sámi and our shared colonial histories:  the work of revitalization, the work of language, of song and dance.”

The Coastal Dance Festival is on Thursday through Sunday at the Anvil Centre in New Westminster.