San Mateo dance festival features the world

Both days’ programming will begin at 2 p.m., with a different lineup of performances each day.

The festival, which is presented by Peninsula Lively Arts of San Mateo, is a celebration of multicultural varieties of dance and music, Interim Managing Director Debbie Chinn said.

“We as an organization realize that it’s very important for us to showcase the international heritage and cultural heritage of the Bay Area,” she said. “Over the last three years, it’s been terrific, and each year it gets bigger and bigger and more celebratory, and more people want to be involved with it.”

Since its inception four years ago, which was catalyzed by the shutdown of a nearby dance festival in San Francisco, more and more performance groups have been interested in participating, Chinn said.

The festival, designed to showcase carefully preserved historical and cultural heritage of a wide variety of groups, is truly an inclusive, multigenerational event featuring performers ages 8 to 86, she said.

“This is not just adults, not just kids, but it’s an entire generation of dancers coming together to showcase and show us the pride they have in their cultural heritage,” she said. “It also represents the multicultural heritage and communities in the Bay Area. This is a reflection of who we are in the Bay Area.”

The festival is designed both to honor a wide variety of different traditions and to acknowledge dance as a medium that can bring people together. Those communal properties of dance are important now more than ever, Chinn said.

“When we come together to learn and watch different cultures ... we’re really saying that we all tell stories. We all have elders. We all have traditions. We all have joy. We share these generational traditions,” she said.

Tickets — which are priced at $55 — as well as the full lineup for each day, can be found at peninsulalivelyarts.org.