Side Step Festival, first held in 1996, has grown over the years from a small biennial event to an internationally renowned contemporary dance festival. The festival has introduced the latest trends and central artists in European contemporary dance.

Side Step Festival 2024 will bring seven international works to Zodiak in Helsinki’s Cable Factory and create a discussion and exchange of experiences around them.
As a thematic guideline, questions of power, freedom, anarchism and the fragility of life and the power of the unknown in relation to the current world situation will be highlighted.
The works are united by currents of the mythical, the demonic, the archaic and the presence of the disembodied. Partly coincidentally, many of the works use ballet as a reference point, drawing inspiration from the mythicism of ballet, shedding critical light on the body’s relationship to, among other things, the discipline or the aesthetic determinants of the dance canon.

The 2024 festival will feature Cullberg / Halla Ólafsdóttir, Silvia Gribaudi, Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir, Florentina Holzinger, Davi Pontes & Wallace Ferreira, Agata Siniarska and July Weber. We will also continue our collaboration with MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre, which started a year ago.