Coastal Dance Festival Honouring Indigenous Stories, Song, and Dance
Dancers of Damelahamid presents the 19th annual Coastal Dance Festival, honouring Indigenous stories, song, and dance from across Canada and around the world. This Northwest Coast Indigenous performing arts festival activates museum and theatre spaces across Metro Vancouver.
Coastal Dance Festival
- Dates & Location: Anvil Centre (777 Columbia St, New Westminster) March 3 and Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC March 4-8, 2026
- Anvil Centre Tickets:
- All-ages Matinees March 3 at 11:00am & 1:00pm
- $23.55 for Adults/Seniors, $13.55 for Students/Child
- MOA Tickets:
- All-ages Matinees March 4 & 5 at 11:00am & 1:00pm
- General Public: Free, with MOA admission
- Artist Sharing Series March 4-6 at 3:00pm
- Free, with MOA admission
- Film screening March 7 at 3:30pm
- Free, with MOA admission
- Festival Stage Performances March 7 & 8 at 1:00pm to 4:00pm
- Free, with MOA admission
- Signature Evening Performances March 6 & 7 at 7:30pm
- $40 for Adults/Senior $30 Students/Child
Festival highlights include: new guests Coastal Wolf Pack (Musqueam, Squamish, Tsartlip, Nanaimo); a preview of Tasha Faye Evans’ (Coast Salish) full-length piece Cedar Woman; returning guests Lax Kxeen Tsimshian Dancers, Sámi singer and activist Sara Marielle Gaup Beaska, and Sámi singer and poet Lawra Somby; and excerpts from Dancers of Damelahamid’s existing body of work, including a mountain goat transformation mask dance originally developed for their performances at Jacob’s Pillow in 2024.
Festival Program Highlights
The festival opens with two matinee performances at Anvil Centre (March 3), designed to foster an environment for youth to gain a deeper understanding of Indigenous dance, culture, and stories. The performances will open with a presentation from Chesha7 iy lha men (Skwxwu7mesh, Stó:lō, Tsimsian), a family group of grandmothers, mothers, and daughters; followed by the Dancers of Damelahamid, who will perform their popular mask dances from their production Spirit and Tradition.
The program at MOA will feature a series of all-ages matinees, festival stage performances, signature evening performances set among the monumental poles of the museum’s Great Hall, an artist sharing series, and a screening of the film So Surreal: Behind The Masks, directed by Neil Diamond and Joanne Robertson.
Matinees on March 4 and 5 will include performances from the Dancers of Damelahamid and Sara Marielle Gaup Beaska and Lawra Somby, who were last presented at the Coastal Dance Festival in 2022, and return to share their deeply rooted yoiking traditions with Vancouver audiences.
The festival’s artist sharing series at MOA will run daily from March 4-6 and feature conversations with Dr. Sarah Hunt (Kwakwaka’wakw); and Lawra Somby and Sara Marielle Gaup Beaska. The March 5 sharing will also feature a screening of So Surreal: Behind The Masks.
The signature evening performance on March 6 will include Squamish-based Spakwus Slolem (Skwxwu7mesh), who share their canoe and cedar longhouse culture; Yisya̱’winux̱w; the Dancers of Damelahamid; and Sara Marielle Gaup Beaska and Lawra Somby.
On March 7, audiences will see returning favourites Yisya̱’winux̱w (Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw), representing many of the 16 Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw tribes of Northern Vancouver Island; the award-winning Inland Tlingit Dakhká Khwáan Dancers; Rainbow Creek Dancers (Haida), founded in 1980 by Robert and Reg Davidson; and mask-dancing group Git Hayetsk (Nisga’a, Tsimshian).
The signature evening performance on March 7 will feature mask-dancing group Git Hoan (Tsimshian); the Dancers of Damelahamid; Tasha Faye Evans’ preview presentation of Cedar Woman, a dance honouring a legacy of Coast Salish women spanning all the way back to a tree in the Great Flood; and the Coastal Dance Festival debut of Coastal Wolf Pack.
On March 8, Dancers of Damelahamid take the stage alongside dynamic dance group Chinook Song Catchers (Skwxwú7mesh, Nisga’a); the Dakhká Khwáan Dancers; and the Lax Kxeen Tsimshian Dancers, returning to the festival for the first time since their 2017 appearance.
Follow Miss604 on:
