Ocean Dance Festival begins Nov 22

Dancers from fifteen countries will perform at a four-day international dance festival, titled ‘Ocean Dance Festival 2019’, which will be held from November 22-25, 2019 in Cox’s Bazar.

The theme of the festival is ‘Bridging the Gap’.  It will be organised for the first time by Nrityajog, the Bangladesh chapter of a worldwide dance artists’ organisation, the World Dance Alliance – Asia Pacific. It will be combined with the yearly event of the WDA-AP.

A press conference was held on Monday regarding the upcoming festival at a city hotel.

The logo of Ocean Dance Festival was unveiled at the press conference.

General secretary of Nrityajog and vice-president (South Asia) for WDA-AP Lubna Marium presided over the press conference. General manager of program department of Channel-i Shahidul Alam Sachchu, director of Mattra Sanaul Arefin, dancer and choreographer Shibli Mohammad and others spoke at the program. President of Nrityajog Anisul Islam Hiru delivered the welcome speech.

Over 200 dancers, teachers, researchers and choreographers from 15 Asian countries will participate in the festival.

Dancers from Taiwan, Korea, Canada, USA, Australia and other South Asian countries have already confirmed about their participation in the festival.

Dance performances of different genres from Bangladesh, Asia and the Asia Pacific region will be performed every day at 4.00 pm.

A unique selection of the ODF will be twinning projects between Australia and Bangladesh, USA and Bangladesh and India and Bangladesh. Another component is a ‘choreolab’, preceding the ODF, from November 5 – 15 , 2019, for 25 mid-career dancers, mentored by Canadian-Irani dancer Sashar Zarif, based on his practice of the ‘Dance of Mugham’ – a mid-eastern genre of art.

In addition folk dances from South Asian countries will also be featured at the event.

The festival is also supported by cultural affairs ministry and Bangladesh Tourism Board. The theatre department of Chittagong University is the academic partner and Mattra and Channel-i are event partners of the festival.