The story
Reykjavik Dance Festival in Reykjavík
Founded in 2002 by independent Icelandic choreographers who lacked performance spaces, this is Iceland's only international festival dedicated to dance. It stages Icelandic and touring international works in black-box theaters around Reykjavik each late summer, with programming that consciously responds to the country's thin historical dance tradition and past legal bans on public dancing.
A group of independent Icelandic dance artists frustrated by the lack of stages available to them organized the first Reykjavik Dance Festival in 2002, turning informal complaints about missing venues into the country's only international festival dedicated to dance and choreography.