Afro Dance Xplosion 2026: Transcen-dance brings together artists from Africa and its diaspora for an ambitious evening celebrating the extraordinary range, energy and creativity of African dance.
Taking place at Midlands Arts Centre during Black History Month, the festival brings internationally recognised companies into conversation with artists based closer to home, demonstrating how African and diasporic dance traditions continue to evolve across countries and generations.
The 2026 programme includes Ballet National de Côte d’Ivoire, led by Directeur Général Georges Momboye, alongside Roots and More, BlakeArts, Antonio Bukhar and Birmingham’s acclaimed ACE Dance and Music Company.
Together, the participating artists represent different approaches to movement and performance, creating a programme that does not treat African dance as a single tradition but instead celebrates the diversity of styles, histories and creative practices found across the continent and diaspora.
The evening also incorporates film, with a screening of Ndono, a short film from Bakalama in Senegal.
By combining live dance and moving image, Transcen-dance places contemporary performance within a much broader cultural landscape, allowing audiences to experience how movement, rhythm, storytelling and identity can travel between different artistic forms.
Birmingham provides a particularly fitting home for the festival. The city has a longstanding relationship with African and Caribbean dance, supported by artists and organisations that have built new forms of Black British performance while maintaining connections with traditions from across the African continent.
ACE Dance and Music Company is part of that cultural landscape, making the appearance of local and international performers within the same programme especially significant.
The title Transcen-dance reflects the festival’s ambition to move across boundaries — geographical, generational and artistic — while demonstrating the ability of dance to communicate beyond language.
Suitable for audiences aged seven and above, the three-hour programme provides families as well as dedicated dance audiences with an opportunity to encounter high-quality African and diasporic performance.
For Black History Month 2026, Afro Dance Xplosion offers much more than a showcase. It is a celebration of African creativity as a living, innovative and internationally connected artistic force.
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