Ethnic dance festival

Ethnic Dance Festival, June 7 – 30

May 27, 2013 by Amie

The San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival, founded to present the ethnic dance companies in the Bay Area, includes performers from throughout Northern California with over 600 dance companies and 100 different genres. During its rich history, the Festival has celebrated and fostered appreciation for the diverse cultural communities in the Bay Area and Northern California. As the first multicultural, city-sponsored ethnic dance festival in America, the Festival has a responsibility and the honor to provide an outstanding opportunity for artists who seek to present the dance expressions of their cultural and ethnic heritages. Participants come from varied socio-economical backgrounds, representing a broad range of occupations and lifestyles and during the month long festival. Students, masters and groups from regions as varied as Senegal, Tobasco and Barangay all dance together on the same stage.
The four programs, one on each weekend of the month, feature 7 to 11 companies and are comprised of performers selected from an annual audition with World Arts West, the presenter of the San Francisco Ethnic Dance Festival. WAW’s mission is to support artists sustaining the world’s diverse dance traditions by providing needed services and performance opportunities and to provide the general public with opportunities to experience and learn more about world arts and cultures. The Festival plays a crucial role in California’s cultural ecology, highlighting the diverse heart and soul of San Francisco.