The 2026 Lion awards for Dance

The Bangarra Dance Theatre, Australia’s leading First Nations performing arts company, is the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement of Biennale Danza 2026, becoming the first company and First Nations performers to receive the award. Mamela Nyamza, the South African dancer, choreographer, director and activist is the recipient of the Silver Lion. With Bangarra Dance Theatre and Mamela Nyamza, Biennale Danza acknowledges artists who have transformed, evolved and brought new urgency to the language of dance, infusing it with the vital force of the respective cultures of their origins, deeply connected to the rhythms, landscapes and symbols of ancestral traditions.

“Since the start of my directorship – writes the artistic director Sir Wayne McGregor – I have aimed to profile and advocate for the outstanding artists and companies whose influence and impact extend beyond their remarkable work alone. Highlighting and honouring the artists selected for this year’s Golden and Silver Lions exemplifies this ambition – not least because they are individuals and collectives who have caused a seismic shift in our understanding of dance and the cultural context in which it is performed. Their integrity, passion, commitment and power have often driven radical change, frequently overcoming great challenge and resistance”.

The Lions, approved by the Board of Directors of La Biennale di Venezia at the recommendation of the artistic director Sir Wayne McGregor, will receive their awards during the 20^th International Festival of Contemporary Dance, which will take place in Venice from July 17^th to August 1^st, 2026.

“With its eighteen versatile and dynamic Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dancers, Bangarra (a Wiradjuri word meaning “to make fire”) is one of the leading and internationally renowned performing arts companies in Australia. Each one of the dancers, proud of their background, draws from a cultural legacy that has spanned 65,000 years across generations, creating powerful works that bring together dance, music and poetry. Since its inception in 1989, Bangarra has made a significant impact on the Australian and global theatre scene, touring productions telling the stories of First Nations peoples.
Stephen Page, a Nunukul/Ngugi man of the Quandamooka Peoples and a Munaldjali man of the Yugambeh Nation, was the artistic director of Bangarra for over thirty years. From 1991 – 2022, Page shaped the company and a landmark body of more than 27 works, transforming the landscape of Australian performing arts and catapulting Bangarra onto the world stage as contemporary First Nations storyteller. This legacy has been carried forward since 2023 by award-winning choreographer Frances Rings, a descendant of the Mirning Tribe from the west coast of South Australia. Under Rings’ leadership as Artistic Director and Co-CEO of Bangarra, “the company continues its mission to promote awareness and understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Striat Islander cultures” (from the motivation).
At the 20^th International Festival of Contemporary Dance, Bangarra Dance Theatre will present the European premiere of Terrain (July 25^th and 26^th, Teatro Malibran). Exploring the relationship of First Nations people to Country and how landscape becomes a second skin, Terrain is inspired by the timeless beauty of Australia’s largest salt lake, Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in South Australia. Choreographed by Frances Rings, Terrain’s nine-part performance evokes the power of body and land converging to bring spirit to place. “Watch the waters rise and fall as Bangarra reconnects with the energy of land and the resilient spirit of the people who care for its future” (from the presentation).

“Bodily thought that delves its roots in the collective memory and is moved by the currents of history, gender, society and politics, underpins the work of the South African dancer, choreographer and activist Mamela Nyamza. Her Afro-descendant roots merge with her training in classical and modern dance, jazz, gumboot and Butoh to speak a new language. From the exciting 2008 solo Hatched which revealed her to the world, and was later re-choreographed for ensemble, to Afro-fusion, Isingqala and Amafongkong, I Stand Corrected and 19-born-76-rebels, Black Privilege and GroundeD, Nyamza creates her deeply personal and political narratives to shed light on traumatic issues such as the corrected rape inflicted on South African lesbians, or the Soweto riots and massacre in 1976, drawing from her own life and upbringing in Gugulethu. An advocate of initiatives in favour of social justice and raising awareness of gender issues, Nyamza was a co-Director and Collaborator of the University of Stellenbosch’s Project Move 1524, which employed dance therapy to address HIV/AIDS, domestic violence and substance abuse” (from the motivation). Mamela Nyamza will make her debut on the stage of the 20^th International Festival of Contemporary Dance on July 19^th at the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale with the European premiere of The Herd/Less, a work about phallacy of a beautiful world evoking violent realities of continuous vulnerability and that explores the double meaning of “the herd”: the symbol of collective harmony, as well as control and submission.

In the past the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Dance has been awarded to Merce Cunningham (1995), Carolyn Carlson (2006), Pina Bausch (2007), Jirí Kylián (2008), William Forsythe (2010), Sylvie Guillem (2012), Steve Paxton (2014), Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (2015); Maguy Marin (2016); Lucinda Childs (2017); Meg Stuart (2018), Alessandro Sciarroni (2019), La Ribot (2020), Germaine Acogny (2021), Saburo Teshigawara (2022), Simone Forti (2023), Cristina Caprioli (2024), and Twyla Tharp (2025).

The Silver Lion, dedicated to the most influential young artists in dance in recent years, or to the institutions that have distinguished themselves for cultivating new talents, has been awarded in the past to Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's Performing Arts Research and Training Studios (2010), to Michele Di Stefano (2014), to Dana Michel (2017), Marlene Monteiro Freitas (2018), Steven Michel and Théo Mercier (2019), Claudia Castellucci (2020), Oona Doherty (2021), Rocío Molina (2022), Tao Dance Theater (2023), Trajal Harell (2024), and Carolina Bianchi (2025).

Bangarra Dance Theatre is a company of professional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander performers. It is one of Australia’s foremost performing arts companies, sharing its culture with communities and audiences across Australia and the world. Drawing on 65,000 years of cultural heritage, Bangarra Dance Theatre creates powerful works of dance and theatre that blend music, poetry and design. All the members of the Bangarra Dance Theatre are professional dancers and dynamic artists, with great pride in their background. Ignited by an obligation to Country and Community, Bangarra nurtures the transmission of First Peoples’ Story, knowledges, history and experiences to effect change and create lasting impact.
The Bangarra company was founded in 1989 by Uncle Rob Bryant, Cheryl Stone and Carole Y. Johnson, born from the energy of NAISDA, the National Aboriginal Islander Skills Development Association. From 1991 to 2022, Bangarra was led by the Artistic Director Stephen Page. A creative icon, Page’s vision and tenacity have made Bangarra one of the most successful Indigenous or First Nations performing arts companies in the world. Frances Rings, a long-time member of the Bangarra company and an award-winning choreographer, became the company’s Artistic Director and co-CEO in 2023, leading the company with the Executive Director and co-CEO Louise Ingram. Today, Frances and Louise lead the company in Bangarra’s mission to promote awareness and understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.
Bangarra Dance Theatre has toured its productions to notable venues across the world including: the Lincoln Centre (Warumuk, in collaboration with The Australian Ballet); New York City Centre, Sadlers Wells Theatre in London and Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris (Rites, in collaboration with the Australian Ballet); Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Kennedy Centre, Washington and The Queen Elizabeth Hall, London (The Dreaming); Vancouver Playhouse (Spirit, Brolga); Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre (Ochres); Theater Bonn and Hanoi Opera House, Vietnam (Spirit).

Mamela Nyamza (1976, Gugulethu – Cape Town) is a South African dancer, choreographer, director and activist. From the age of 8 years whilst learning Ballet at the Zama Dance School in Gugulethu, Nyamza that her love of body movement will eventually bring both prejudice and prestige to her career as a dance-theatre performing artist. Ridiculed by her childhood peers for her athletic built toned body, to the ultimate rebuke and rejection of her natural body structure by her classical Ballet Teachers at tertiary level, Nyamza inevitably was drawn to the politics of the body. Nyamza boldly proceeded to graduate from the Tshwane University of Technology with a National Diploma in Ballet in 1994. Nyamza started to think of radically deconstructing the normative expectations of who qualifies to be a classical ballerina. In this process, she duly won an audition in 1999 for a scholarship to study further at the Alvin Ailey International School for Dance in New York, where she co-created and performed The Dying Swan in 1999, which subsequently won her the Dance Umbrella Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Dancer in Contemporary Style in 2000. By 2007, Nyamza’s fresh innovations had taken shape which led to the creation of the highly acclaimed Hatched, her first work to kick-start her art programme of unapologetically demystifying, deconstructing and trampling on the norms and standards of the dance/classics.  Nyamza won the Standard Bank National Young Artist for the Dance in 2011, due to her refreshingly innovative choreography and performance in the art of dance. Her newest work, Hatched Ensemble, inspired by her solo work, has already been labelled as a “strikingly original piece, an art installation, a dance performance with communal liberation its chief underlying theme” (The Times, United Kingdom). Through her newly formed non-profit company Mamelas Artistic Movement, Nyamza has proceeded to fulfill her long held wish to provide a creative home for those unemployed dance artists who have been marginalized due to body politics.  Nyamza was recognized by being awarded a Marraines Fiddo Award from Burkina Faso Festival International de Danse de Quagadougou in 2022. With her newly established Non-Profit Company, Nyamza’s vision is to make dance, as the genre of the performance art, to convey body politics on all social issues.