Our Story

The Nederlandse Dansdagen is an annual festival that takes place every year in Maastricht. In the first week of October, a range of dance performances and the best of Dutch dance are used: from 'classical' to 'urban' from 'avant-garde' to 'modern dance'. The program of the Nederlandse Dansdagen represents the diversity that Dutch dance has to offer and shows important developments in Dutch dance: from striking work by young choreographers to current performances by the dance companies.

Mission

ND wants to make the voice of the dance and the dance artist sound louder. In doing so, ND uses the power of dance to move society around social themes.
ND focuses on the heritage, current affairs and future of Dutch dance for the public, dance professional and society within a national and international context.
ND increases the appreciation and involvement of the public for Dutch dance, drives innovation within dance and makes a sustainable contribution to the diverse dance landscape in the Netherlands.

Vision

In recent years ND has developed into a festival for dance. Boundaries fade between disciplines and genres, between choreographer and dancer, between performer and audience, between stage and public space, and between countries. We are making room for all this at our festival, which is partly for this reason that has grown strongly in terms of duration and locations.

Dance and identity

In the report, Thinking of the Netherlands (2019), the Social Cultural Planning Office proposed: '[The Netherlands] is an imagined community, experienced by many as a country, a people, a society with its own collective identity… With shared experiences, memories and ideas about the future. 'ND sees it as a core task to make manifest the role art and culture and specifically dance art play in this imagined community. ND points out that, especially at a time of blurring boundaries, identity has become a central theme in society. Dance as a pure expression goes straight to the heart and tells through the imagination of the stories of the individual and the community in all their diversity.

Heritage, current affairs and future

ND chooses to place these developments in a broader context by explicitly connecting current events with the history and heritage of Dutch dance. After all, a large part of the identity lies in the past. In addition, we also look to the future to ensure that it is an automatically-speaking art form for future generations in which they can express their identity without limits.