About
Our Mission
The Dance Life Festival was founded in 2020 to give the rising dance scene in Nairobi a new stage to share, connect and reinvent the local dance practice. Since then we have organized five editions of the festival that has become the biggest event for dance in Nairobi. Our aim is to build a hub for the entire East African dance industry, creating space to experiment and develop new pieces, especially through international collaborations.
The festival is supported by Upstage Limited, the Goethe-Institut Nairobi and additionally supported by the Trust for Indigenous Culture and Health (TICAH). It is curated and directed by Adam Chienjo.
“For me, dance has always been a lifestyle. It is a career. I teach and I critique. It’s like breathing because every culture has dance. Dance can be used in many ways. It is therapy in that it helps express things that you cannot verbalise. Dance is a vocabulary of movement that is easy to use because it is relatable”
– Adam Chienjo, Curator of the Dance Life Festival