OPENINGS is Dansehallerne’s recurring and wide-ranging festival of dance – a place where new chapters begin, and where the performing arts unfold through both major international guest performances and strong national performances. The festival marks a special moment in Dansehallerne’s annual programme, when the house opens its doors to a broad spectrum of choreographic practices, perspectives, and embodied expressions.

In 2026, OPENINGS forms part of yes – dance biennale, connecting the festival to a larger nationwide focus on dance and choreography in motion, and situating the programme within an even broader context of artistic dialogue across stages, formats, and audiences.

This year’s programme brings together a diverse range of performances that collectively reflect the many directions dance is moving in today. Audiences can experience works that range from the intimate and understated to the large-scale and monumental, from tightly composed pieces to open-ended explorations. Some works centre on the body as physical material and sensorial presence, while others approach choreography more conceptually as structure, language, or social space.

The programme includes solo works, where a single body holds the focus of the stage, and group works, where collectivity, relationships, and shifts between bodies become the driving force. Some performances integrate voice, text, sound, and music as equal elements within the choreographic composition, while others dissolve the boundaries between installation, performance, and theatrical space.

Bringing together both international artists and prominent Danish voices, the programme moves effortlessly across genres and formats: from experimental performance and interdisciplinary collaborations to works that draw on more traditional theatrical approaches – often viewed through a contemporary and inquisitive lens on form and content.

Several works engage with the body as a site of memory, as a political and social space, or as an open question of how we see and understand one another. Others insist on the playful, the sensorial, and the unexpected, opening up experiences that cannot be reduced to a single meaning, but must be encountered in the space itself.

OPENINGS is therefore not simply a series of performances, but a collective invitation to explore the many possible forms of dance. A festival where the familiar is shifted, and where new perspectives are given room to emerge.