20th Holland Dance Festival in The Hague and other cities

In February 2026, the Holland Dance Festival reaches a special milestone: the 20th anniversary edition of the Holland Dance Festival marks a festive moment in the 40-year history of our leading dance festival. From February 4 to 21, 2026, The Hague and other cities will once again serve as the vibrant backdrop for a rich and international program, taking center stage with world premieres, Dutch premieres, and renowned choreographers and dance companies from around the globe. The festival presents an inspiring combination of iconic creators and emerging talent, demonstrating how dance as an art form remains constantly in motion.

20th Holland Dance Festival in The Hague and other cities

Holland Dance Festival is the longest-running international dance biennial in the Netherlands. Dance inspires, and that is why we are so passionate about our work. We are proud to unlock the passion and power of dance and to be able to connect people worldwide through dance. Since 1987!

Holland Dance Festival believes that dance is for everyone: for professionals and amateurs, for people with and without physical or intellectual disabilities, for schoolchildren and the elderly, and every age group in between. It is a festival where you feel at home: there is something new for everyone to discover or to recognize. In addition to the festival, we program performances throughout the theater season and a wide range of educational activities, special projects, workshops, and ongoing, tailor-made lesson programs for groups of all backgrounds, generations, and social classes. One of the highlights from the past was Pina Bausch.  

Pina Bausch

Philippine (Pina) Bausch (Solingen, July 27, 1940 – Wuppertal, June 30, 2009) was a German ballet dancer, choreographer, dance teacher, and artistic director of the Tanztheater in Wuppertal. During the more than thirty years that Pina Bausch led the Tanztheater, it grew into a leading international company. Bausch began studying dance at the age of 14 at the Folkwang Academy in Essen, a renowned institution led at the time by Kurt Jooss. After graduating, she received a scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York in 1959. There she danced with the Metropolitan Opera and the New American Ballet. In 1963, she joined Jooss's Folkwang Ballet as a soloist. Bausch increasingly assisted Jooss, created her first choreography in 1968, and succeeded Jooss as a teacher at the Folkwang Academy in Essen in 1969. In 1972, she became artistic director of the Wuppertal Opera Ballet, which shortly thereafter was renamed Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. Le Sacre du Printemps from 1975 was her last conventional dance piece; from 1976 onwards, she began to experiment more with a collage-like structure. Her repertoire consists of more than forty pieces, each created in close collaboration with her dancers. Throughout her life, Bausch consciously continued to work in Wuppertal, a city she described as “a working day city, not a Sunday city.” Her theme was life. “One must examine everything, the contradictions and frictions, the beautiful and the painful. One must exclude nothing. Only in this way can one discover in what time one lives.” Pina Bausch passed away on June 30, 2009, at the age of sixty-eight. The artistic direction was subsequently assumed by her closest collaborators: the duo Dominique Mercy and Robert Sturm, and from 2013, Lutz Förster. He was succeeded by Adolphe Binder in 2017 and Bettina Wagner Bergelt from early 2019, respectively. In 2010, the Pina Bausch Foundation was established, led by Salomon Bausch, the choreographer's son. The goal of this organization is to keep her artistic legacy alive.  

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20th Holland Dance Festival in The Hague and other cities from 4 to 21 February 2026: https://www.holland-dance.com/ Pina Bausch at HDF: https://hollandfestival.nl/nl/pina-bausch