NCPA presents spectrum 2026: A festival of dances from around the world

Mumbai, 19th January 2026 – The National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) presents Spectrum 2026 – A Festival of Dances from Around the World, its annual dance festival that brings together classical traditions and contemporary explorations from India and abroad. Scheduled across January 30, February 14 and February 22, 2026, the festival unfolds across the Tata Theatre and Experimental Theatre, offering audiences a curated view of how dance continues to evolve while remaining rooted in lineage, discipline, and artistic inquiry.Spectrum has, over the years, become a space where diverse movement vocabularies coexist—where classical forms are re-examined through individual artistic voices and contemporary works explore new relationships between body, space, and sound. The 2026 edition reflects this balance through a program that features Bharatanatyam, Odissi, and Kathak and international contemporary dance, alongside a pedagogical masterclass for students and practitioners. The festival opens on Friday, January 30, at the Tata Theatre with a double bill featuring Bahukriya, a Bharatanatyam presentation by Rama Vaidyanathan and troupe, followed by Khańkhanā—The Sound of Dancing Feet, an Odissi ensemble work by Surupa Sen and the Nrityagram ensemble. While firmly grounded in classical frameworks, both works reflect the artists’ long-standing engagement with form as a living practice. Vaidyanathan, who has trained under eminent gurus and now shapes her own pedagogy, is known for evolving an individual movement language without departing from Bharatanatyam’s structural rigor. Sen, the first graduate of Nrityagram, brings to the stage an Odissi sensibility informed by decades of training, choreographic research, and ensemble building.On Saturday, February 14, the spotlight shifts to Odissi and Kathak through performances by Ratikant Mohapatra with Srjan in Ānanda-Rasam—The Essence of Bliss, and Shama Bhate’s institution Nadroop in Ram Lalla. Mohapatra’s work reflects over four decades of institution-building and choreographic practice that has shaped Odissi’s contemporary trajectory, while Bhate’s Kathak is informed by a lifetime of performance, teaching, and musical training rooted in the Jaipur tradition. The festival concludes on Sunday, February 22, at the Experimental Theatre with BRICKS, a Swiss contemporary dance production by choreographer Nicole Morel, with music by Colombian composer Violeta Cruz. Conceived as a work of physical poetry, BRICKS combines sculptural visual design with movement to explore structure, space, and human presence, offering a contrasting international perspective within the festival’s broader dance landscape.Extending the festival beyond performance, Spectrum 2026 also includes two masterclasses presented as part of the NCPA’s Nrityagurukul initiative. The first is a two-day masterclass by Surupa Sen on January 28 and 29, supported by Bank of America, titled Techniques for Longevity in an Indian Dance Career. Emerging from Sen’s long and sustained engagement with Odissi as a living practice, the session reflects on longevity as the careful cultivation of the dancer’s relationship with body, mind, and form over time, and is open to practitioners across Indian classical dance traditions. This is followed by Orchestrating Stillness and Movement: Sthāna, Gati, and the Dynamic Function of Cārīs in the Dancer-Actor’s Training, a two-day Marga Natya masterclass by Piyal Bhattacharya on February 18 and 19, which examines stillness and movement as foundational conditions of performance, situating the body as a site of integration where breath, consciousness and motion converge.About NCPAThe National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), Mumbai, is India’s premier cultural institution. Inaugurated in 1969, itwas the first multi-venue, multi-genre cultural centre in South Asia. The NCPA is committed to preserving and promoting India’s rich and vibrant artistic heritage in the fields of music, dance, theatre, film, literature, and photography, as well as presenting new and innovative work by Indian and international artistes from a diverse range of genres, including drama, contemporary dance, orchestral concerts, opera, jazz and chamber music. Today, the NCPA hosts more than 700 events each year, making it India’s largest and most holistic performing arts centre.