Celebrating 25 years, Tempo Dance Festival | Te Rerenga o Tere is Aotearoa New Zealand’s gathering ground for the fearless, the rebellious and the boundary-breaking — bringing the best dance and body-oriented ideas from across the country and beyond to Tāmaki Makaurau from 13–18 October.
This year’s festival offers 27 activations featuring more than 160 artists across theatres, galleries, car parks, cinemas, around our newest train stations, studios and streets, transforming Tāmaki Makaurau into a place where artists, audiences and ideas collide.
The programme spans contemporary and street dance, genre-bending Pasifika performance meets live Metalcore, disability-led meditations on motherhood, queer reimaginings, site specific works, as well as workshops, classes, screenings and a club night — inviting audiences to experience dance in unexpected ways.
The festival has helped shape the landscape of dance in Aotearoa — carrying the work of some of the country’s most influential dance makers, including the late Douglas Wright, Michael Parmenter, Atamira Dance Company, Ōkāreka Dance Company, Malia Johnston, Footnote New Zealand Dance, New Zealand Dance Company, Parris Goebel and The Palace Dance Studio crews, while creating space for new generations of artists to develop ambitious and boundary-breaking work.
“I truly believe dance and being in our bodies is the antidote to today’s challenges, and nothing enforces that for me more than seeing the world-renowned dance creatives we have here in Aotearoa. Whether dance is something you watch or something you do, it literally moves you – your muscles fire – and brings joy, community and transformation. This Tempo, we’re celebrating some of the best choreographers and dancers this country has to offer,” says Zanetti (they/them), Artistic Director and Festival Producer.
The 2026 programme brings together artists who are pushing forms, crossing disciplines and inviting audiences to experience dance in surprising and immersive ways.
Leading the programme at Q Theatre is Atamira Dance Company’s YMCĀ, a bold takatāpui rebirth of the Village People, commissioned from acclaimed choreographer Oli Mathiesen (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāti Manu). Following a recent commission at the Venice Biennale Danza and the globally renowned The Butterfly Who Flew Into the Rave, this world premiere performance brings together camp, culture and contemporary movement in a work that challenges ideas of identity, belonging and appropriation.
Also at Q Theatre, Touch Compass, Aotearoa New Zealand’s leading disability-led dance company, presents WHITE NOISE, created by Alisha McLennan Marler in collaboration with Jessie McCall, drawing from lived experience to explore disability, motherhood and connection.
Award-winning creative duo CONJAH (Jahra Wasasala & Ooshcon) and Auckland Livepresent the highly anticipated Tāmaki Makaurau debut of DARK!DARK!DARK!, a genre-defying collision of dance, live Metalcore, costume, sound and immersive promenade design.
Hip Hop busts into theatrical territory with Off Axis, a new work created by award-winning John “Happyfeet” Vaifale and performed by some of the finest freestyle dancers in Aotearoa, exploring what Hip Hop can look like, feel like and become.
Also pushing the boundaries of performance is MARKING OUT 3 COUNT, a collision of professional wrestlers and dance that examines spectacle, ritual and the blurred line between performance and reality. Drawing on the theatrical world of wrestling, the work turns the referee’s famous three-count into a hypnotic physical score.
Following its sold-out 2025 season, the immersive public performance Tōrua, presented by Movement of the Human and Auckland Live and supported by Auckland Council Events, returns to Tāmaki Makaurau. This time, the performance activates the spaces around two of Auckland’s newest city landmarks – Karanga-a-Hape Station and Te Waihorotiu Station.
Tempo will also transform Myers Park and Karangahape Road with Fitting In: Karangahape GGebi (깨비), a site-specific outdoor work led by creative director Yunha Jang, bringing contemporary dance, community performers and sculptural headpieces into the heart of the city. Whilst at a carpark near you EXHAUST opens a concrete portal to bring dance, life and breath into a local vehicle storage facility.
New Zealand School of Dance presents SHOWPONY, choreographed by Matte Roffe, examining the performer’s body as both athlete and offering – trained to entertain, impress and endure. Presented alongside three exciting works from Ngā Akoranga Kani Kani | Dance Studies at Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland from Sarah Knox with Third Years Dancers, Horn’s Out and Kerah McLean Duffy.
Other highlights include Kelly Nash’s The Room Would Split Open, a work exploring care, memory and the body as an archive, building on her YIRRAMBOI and Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts co-commission Mythosoma; the international premiere of Rebecca Jensen’s highly-lauded Natural Basic, where bodies respond like barometers to change as they explore the waltz step; val smith’s GLIMMER, a meditation on waiting and transgender time, paired with Melbourne-based Deanne Butterworth’s extraordinary solo When It Is Finished; Xin Ji and Alistair Deverick’s Body Story 0.25, an intimate exploration of the body as resistance and transformation at Objectspace; Wiseman Zekaria Mataiti’s 404: Fafa Not Found, exploring queer Pasifika identity via Aotearoa Ballroom, alongside two new works from Lily-Mae Solhee Baird and Janina Smolira looking at Buchaechum, Taekwondo and Attachment Theory; Jessie McCall’s Big Low Dream presented by Footnote New Zealand Dance, a rehearsal of possible futures through dream logic; and Sefa Tunupopo’s SEKI, a gentle and joyful street dance love letter to family.
For dancers, artists and anyone who appreciates beauty, artistry and the thrill of the unexpected, Tempo remains what it has always been: a platform, a party and a provocation to move you.
Tempo Dance Festival | Te Rerenga o Tere takes place across Tāmaki Makaurau from 13–18 October 2026.
The full programme is available now at: www.tempodancefestival.co.nz