The 19th annual Coastal Dance Festival returns to Metro Vancouver this March, transforming theatre and museum spaces into vibrant sites of live Indigenous performance. Presented by Dancers of Damelahamid, the festival will take place at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC from March 4–8.
Bringing together artists from across the Northwest Coast and around the world, the festival celebrates ancestral knowledge and contemporary expression. This year’s program features both returning favourites and exciting new guests, offering audiences a dynamic cross-section of Indigenous artistic practices.
Among the highlights is the festival debut of Coastal Wolf Pack (Musqueam, Squamish, Tsartlip, Nanaimo), as well as a Coast Salish artist Tasha Faye Evans’ full-length work Cedar Woman, a dance honouring a matrilineal legacy stretching back to a tree that survived the Great Flood. Returning artists include the Lax Kxeen Tsimshian Dancers, the Inland Tlingit Dakhká Khwáan Dancers, and Sámi singer-activists Sara Marielle Gaup Beaska and Lawra Somby, who will share their deeply rooted yoiking traditions. Dancers of Damelahamid will also present excerpts from their repertoire, including a striking mountain goat transformation mask dance first developed for Jacob’s Pillow in 2024.
The MOA programming includes all-ages matinees, festival stage showcases featuring multiple groups each night, signature evening performances, and an artist sharing series. Conversations with Kwakwaka’wakw scholar Dr. Sarah Hunt and with Beaska and Somby invite deeper engagement, alongside a screening of So Surreal: Behind The Masks, directed by Neil Diamond and Joanne Robertson.
Across six days, the Coastal Dance Festival offers audiences an opportunity to experience Indigenous performance as vibrant, evolving, and profoundly connected to place. Tickets and full details are available at damelahamid.ca.
Last modified: March 3, 2026
