Following the success of the 2025 edition, Myth Makers/Creatori di miti – a journey through the generative power of art – Wayne McGregor returns to direct the Biennale Danza for its 20th International Festival of Contemporary Dance, running from 17 July to 1 August 2026.
The title of this special edition is Time Does Not Exist: an idea inspired by physicist Carlo Rovelli, who argues that time is not an absolute dimension but a relationship between events – subjective, relational, and ever-shifting. Like dance itself, which has always inhabited its own temporality: non-linear, multiple, simultaneous, capable of holding past and present, memory and invention, within a single gesture. To mark twenty years of the festival, McGregor draws on the living archive of Biennale Danza and looks forward – towards bodies dancing outside of time and out of sync, in a space with no expiry date.
The 2026 Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement goes to Bangarra Dance Theatre, the extraordinary Australian First Nations dance theatre company that celebrates and promotes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. In their European premiere, they will perform Terrain, choreographed by Frances Rings with music by David Page: a breathtaking exploration of the Kati Thanda – Lake Eyre desert, where body and earth converge to carry spirit into place, and the ancestral bonds between people and Country unfold through movement.
The Silver Lion goes to South African artist Mamela Nyamza, with The Herd/Less – a Biennale co-commission and European premiere. A work that dismantles the codes of power and privilege through symbolic everyday objects – spears, arrows, whips, animal hides – evoking the control exerted over collective bodies. A visual and physical detonation of the falsehoods embedded in our realities.
The programme spans geographies, generations and choreographic languages with rare breadth. Emanuel Gat presents the world premiere of Five Days in the Sun, five choreographic tableaux inspired by Mahler’s Fifth Symphony – an emotional journey from darkness to light, from tension to ecstasy. The WINN Dance Company brings the world premiere of When, If Not Now?, a company of artists aged 40 and over – including superstar Diana Vishneva – that challenges the age limits imposed by the dance industry, proving that art has no expiry date. The legendary John Neumeier, alongside Imre+Marne van Opstal and Roma de Jesus, presents Scirocco, a diptych comprising Death in Venice and Bridge of Sighs.
Franco-Malagasy artist Soa Ratsifandrihana explores in Fampitaha, fampita, fampitàna – comparison, transmission and rivalry in Malagasy – the dialogue between diasporic bodies and their places of origin. Eiko Otake and Wen Hui, artists raised respectively in post-war Japan and Cultural Revolution China, ask a searing question in What Is War: why, 80 years after the end of the Second World War, do wars still exist? Adam Linder, with Drip Tekhne for the Danish Dance Theatre, weaves together movement, pop culture and fashion into an aesthetic that erases the boundaries of choreographic language. Finnish artist Kalle Nio fuses magic, cinema and theatre in Tempo, in collaboration with Brazilian choreographer Fernando Melo. Sámi artist Elle Sofe Sara brings Láhppon/Lost, a physical account of the 1852 Kautokeino Rebellion, in collaboration with the Norwegian National Ballet. And Omar Rajeh and Mia Habis invite artists and audiences to share space together in Dance People, a joyful and politically charged performance on power structures and coexistence.
A moment of rare intensity: the enigmatic Molissa Fenley returns to Venice with her landmark solo State of Darkness – 35 minutes of athletic fury set against Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring – performed by American dancer Cassandra Trenary, while Fenley herself will also appear live in her own version of the work.
To mark the festival’s twentieth anniversary, a major historical exhibition – Life Lines – created in collaboration with the Biennale’s Historical Archive (ASAC), will trace the mission and achievements of Biennale Danza through film, photography, documents and objects, reminding us that the body is a living archive.
Biennale College Danza returns with 16 young dancers from around the world and two emerging choreographers in residence, who will work this year with two towering innovators: Molissa Fenley and Maxine Doyle – co-director of Punchdrunk’s award-winning productions including Sleep No More and The Drowned Man – who will each create a new work specifically for the College dancers: On Tenderness and Hubris. The winners of the open calls for new choreography – Italian artist Andrea Salutri with Invisible and New Zealand choreographer Oli Mathiesen with Just Between Me and Jesus, selected from over 700 applications – will present their world premieres at the festival. Open workshops, artist talks and a mentoring programme for young dance journalists and curators complete an offer designed to make Biennale Danza a living, generous and timeless ecosystem.

Featured image: ph. Pal Hansen