Introduction

Watching a dance performance in the Asia Pacific region involves a complex of threads and pathways. Artists are incorporating a diversity of movement languages, dance philosophies, techniques, and narratives that interweave in divergent and interconnected lines around the region. Choreographers work through their embodied cultural memories and multiple dance traditions - these often co-exist and merge with western contemporary dance forms. Dance around the region is moving rapidly with a creative confidence that is stimulating audiences and re-framing the genre of contemporary dance in the region and beyond. The challenge is to facilitate dance opportunities that link histories and communal cultural knowledge with new creative explorations led by individual artists.