New Baltic Dance (NBD) Festival 2026

The international contemporary dance festival New Baltic Dance (NBD) will take place for the 31st time from February 8 to March 4, 2027, in Vilnius, opening the NBD Season 31. Shifting its usual spring dates to late winter, the festival will welcome audiences with the heat, energy, and vitality generated by the dancing body.

The programme is connected by unfiltered intimacy—born from effort, exhaustion, and being in one another’s presence.The festival invites viewers closer to what remains pure when movement reaches exhaustion and a comfortable distance no longer suffices for openness. Gentleness and strength, desire and vulnerability, personal memory and shared joy will meet on stage. Through these experiences, NBD continues the core question that has guided the festival for years: what transforms individual bodies into a community?

The festival will open with the performance “DUB”, in which choreographer Amala Dianor brings together young dancers for a collaborative movement experiment. Here, different dance languages are adopted, altered, and reconnected to explore ways of moving together while remaining true to oneself.

From March 3 to 4, the festival will conclude with “REMACHINE” by choreographer Jefta van Dinther, a creator familiar to Lithuanian audiences. Combining dance and voice in collaboration with composer Anna von Hausswolff, the piece explores the human relationship with a technology-driven environment, the boundaries of the body, and the constant drive to push forward.

The opportunity to present the long-awaited “REMACHINE” became one of the main reasons for hosting the festival earlier in the year. The calendar was also adjusted due to upcoming events in Vilnius marking Lithuania’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union. This time, the final festival performances will welcome the arrival of spring.

The gatherings of NBD 31 will continue even after the festival concludes. As the Lithuanian Dance Centre and the festival celebrate their successive 30th anniversaries, a new chapter begins: New Baltic Dance is introduced as a season.While the festival remains its centerpiece, the year-round programme will be expanded by events and initiatives organized by the Lithuanian Dance Centre and its partners under the NBD Season 31 brand.

These initiatives will be unified by shared NBD values and the aim to create more opportunities to engage with contemporary dance. The season format will allow for a more consistent presentation of creators, provide greater visibility for the work of colleagues and partners, and strengthen the place of dance within cultural life.