DanceHouse Reveals 2026/27 Season Lineup

DanceHouse has announced its 2026/27 season of five evocative contemporary performances from some of the world's leading dance companies, on stage at the Vancouver Playhouse from October 2026 through April 2027. An eclectic mix of dancemakers from Canada, the UK, Sweden, and India will explore the many pathways to liberation–from breaking free of conformity and shame to uniting in our fight against an increasingly fractured world and embracing our intrinsic connection to the limitless expanse of the universe around us. DanceHouse's 2026/27 season includes two BC premieres, a Canadian premiere, a North American premiere, and the highly anticipated return of the Olivier Award-winning Assembly Hall, which had its world premiere as part of DanceHouse's 2023/24 season.

“We are delighted to present our 19th season of boundary-pushing works to Vancouver audiences,” says Jim Smith, Artistic and Executive Director of DanceHouse. “Opening with Compagnie Catherine Gaudet's ODE, the season begins with a powerful exploration of collective energy and shared experience. Our winter productions mark two important firsts: the DanceHouse debut of Sweden's Cirkus Cirkör, whose Knitting Peace uses contemporary circus to reflect on connection and cooperation, and our first presentation from India with Aditi Mangaldas's Forbidden, a work that bridges classical tradition and contemporary inquiry. The season culminates with Kidd Pivot's Assembly Hall and Wayne McGregor's Deepstaria, two internationally acclaimed works that examine how we organize, deliberate, and situate ourselves within larger social and ecological systems. Together, these performances offer audiences a dynamic season of virtuosity, imagination, and deeply contemporary perspective.”

The 2026/27 DanceHouse Season includes:

ODE – Compagnie Catherine Gaudet (Montréal)

October 23 & 24, 2026 at 8pm | Vancouver Playhouse
BC Premiere 
Catherine Gaudet's astounding new work ODE channels the industrial happiness complex into a stripped-down exhortation/exploration of group-think conformity and cultural collapse. Even as the brutalizing demand for orthodoxy crushes individual need underfoot, lingering at the edge of exhaustion is a slender blade of hope, like a secular prayer for a gentler world.

Knitting Peace – Cirkus Cirkör (Sweden)

Co-presented with The Cultch
January 27-30, 2027 at 8pm | Vancouver Playhouse 
Canadian Premiere
The phrase “hanging by a thread” comes to life in Cirkus Cirkör's colossal work Knitting Peace. More circus than dance, the world-renowned Swedish company uses the ancient language of spectacle to address contemporary issues. Out of the materiality of ropes, yarn and gossamer thread, emerges something radically transformative, binding us together in a new kind of liberation.  

Forbidden – Aditi Mangaldas Dance Company (India)

Community Partner: Indian Summer Festival
February 26 & 27, 2027 at 8pm | Vancouver Playhouse
North American Premiere
The wondrous depth of carnality lights the fire of Forbidden, Aditi Mangaldas's singular exploration of female sexuality. Couched in gestures both euphemistic and explicit, the language of pleasure is given its fullest flower. Combining traditional Kathak dance and the Kama Sutra, Mangaldas's solo performance throws off the mantle of shame to illuminate the body in all its incandescent beauty.

Assembly Hall – Kidd Pivot (Vancouver)

March 17-20, 2027 at 8pm | Vancouver Playhouse
Back by popular demand, Kidd Pivot returns with its latest award-winning offering, Assembly Hall. From the team that brought you the ground-breaking productions of Betroffenheit and Revisor comes a dance theatre hybrid that continues the company's signature wit, irreverence and wild invention. Eight magnificent performers assemble to explore the human need to congregate and belong. In a gathering place that doubles as community hall and mythic realm, we witness the joys and dangers of devoted like-mindedness and the pain of exile.

Deepstaria – Company Wayne McGregor (UK)