alkantara adopted its current name in 2005. It started out in 1993 as a small Portuguese dance platform called Danças na Cidade, with the mission of making visible the work of the first generation of choreographers working in contemporary dance in Portugal. The success of the first editions of the platform led to the creation of the Cultural Association Danças na Cidade in 1995 and the first multi-annual government support in 1996.

Over the years, Danças na Cidade grew into an international dance event, which, although relatively small and poorly funded, became part of the international festival calendar, mainly through its programme of ‘new’ values and its unique spirit of exchange.

Although Danças na Cidade was a real success story, the evaluation of the 1997 edition gave rise to two important innovations for future editions:
1. In an era of fast globalisation, we decided to give more attention to artists from outside of Europe, showing a more differentiated, less euro-centric vision of contemporary creation.
2. As more venues in Lisbon were providing the city with a steady flow of international programming, it was decided to strengthen the role of the organization as a place for artistic exchange.

Ten years ago, programming on a global scale was still rare; it was decided to turn the festival into a biennial event, so as to make this financially possible. Also, the new biennial rhythm created space for deepening and widening the artistic exchange. A festival is a fantastic meeting place, but meetings tend to be short and shallow. As of 1998, Danças na Cidade started organizing regular international events, in between festivals, dedicated to training, artistic investigation and international exchange. Over the past ten years, hundreds of young artists from all over Europe and the rest of the world have found opportunities to meet, discuss, exchange experiences and create together, in events taking place in Lisbon, Cape Verde, Maputo, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Girona and Cagliari, amongst other places.

In 2005 Danças na Cidade was re-baptized into “alkantara”, the festival’s scope widened from dance to the performing arts and its financial base diversified, through new alliances with the city of Lisbon and partnerships with most of Lisbon’s main venues. At the same time, a more intimate link was created between the festival on the one hand and the many international Encounters and research projects in between festivals on the other hand. In June 2006, an extremely successful first edition of alkantara festival confirmed our options: Danças na Cidade was gone, but alkantara is here to stay.

“Al kantara” means “the bridge” in Arabic (Alcântara also happens to be the neighbourhood of the bridge over the river Tejo in Lisbon) and it is our mission to build bridges: between artists, between cultures, between art forms.
The organization’s main objectives include:
· Stimulate intercultural exchange on a local and international level.
· Stimulate and internationalise Portuguese artistic creation.
· Create formats for research and exchange on grassroots level.
· Give incentive to the creation of long-lasting collaborations and cultural networks on a European and global scale.
· Stimulate the debate on cultural diversity and transculturalism.
· Fight cultural exclusion on all levels – local, national and international.

alkantara realizes basically three types of events, organized in a biennial cycle:
1. the international performing arts festival alkantara, dedicated to new values, artistic quality and international mobility of arts professionals and art works.
2. projects of international collaboration with partner organisations in and outside of Europe, dedicated to artistic research, creation and international presentation.
3. production of articles of international dissemination, like publications, video documentaries and web-based communication tools (digital publications and web logs)

It is important to understand the interlocking nature of all these activities: research events feed into publications and co-productions, which, in turn, feed into the festival and international presentations. In the opposite direction, the festival opens up new contacts and partnerships for future collaborative projects.