About Us

Billingham International Folklore Festival of World Dance (BIFF) since its foundation in 1965 has welcomed 20,000 performers from 95 different countries. BIFF is a unique multicultural event celebrating World Dance in all its variety and its fusion with other art forms and sport.

During each festival, Billingham transforms into a kaleidoscope of colour, joie de vivre & friendship. Billingham becomes a “meeting place” for world cultures, showcasing the diversity & richness of the world through traditional & contemporary cultures in the forms of dance, music, songs, costumes & crafts. These are incorporated into various performances, parades, exhibitions and workshops. Each festival presents over 300 international performers from around the world.

Every year we receive hundreds of applications from traditional dance companies around the globe, from which we select 8 to appear in Billingham.

 Billingham Festival is not only about performances and workshops. Two weeks prior and during the festival, Billingham turns into a unique centre for international creative collaboration between choreographers and performers, informing and sharing their practice, creating new work around the annual festival theme and collaborating on a flagship festival performance.

Originally launched in 1965 by Stockton Borough Council and  Philip Conroy, Billingham is a haven of colour and culture for a week-long Festival in the Summer to celebrate Billingham International Folklore Festival of World Dance.

Philip Conroy was a Head Teacher who had a passion for Irish Dance and performed one Saturday in the 1960s in Billingham Town Centre. At the end of this show Mr Conroy mentioned to councillors present that he had just returned from the continent from a week-long folklore festival and remarked that Billingham would be an ideal setting for such a festival, so was the Billingham Festival born in 1965.

Since the beginning in 1965 only Austria, Estonia and Hungary were represented. Now in its 55^th year, the festival hosts around 20,000 performers from more than 90 countries. The festival has extended its content to include dance in all its variety, from traditional to contemporary, and in later years to include fusion of dance, arts & sports.

Joe Maloney, who became the Festival Director in 1998, a role he cherished and took immense pleasure in doing, together with his wife Olga Maloney, over the last 20 years made a huge contribution to the festival development, introducing new, contemporary identity to the festival in 2011. Joe sadly died in December 2018, but his legacy will stay with the festival forever.

Billingham Festival is proud to be one of the founding members of the International  Organisation CIOFF®, and to have Olga Maloney, Billingham Festival Artistic Director as CIOFF® Secretary-General.

In 2011, with the support of Arts Council England, Billingham  Festival entered a New Era, introducing contemporary dance, based on multi-cultural roots, alongside the traditional dance, into its programme.

Since then the festival has produced the following

Dance and arts commissions:

• 2011- Opening and Closing Ceremonies – Keira Martin Dance
• 2014 – “Poetry in Motion” – Zendah
• 2015 – “Dos Plumas al Viento” – Ballet Tupa Marka, Chile
• 2015 – “NETOTILOZ” – Teesside University , Jessica Smith and Carmen Avalos, Mexico
• 2015 – “World United by Dance” Sculpture – Carmen Avalos
• 2016 – Portrait of a Distant Land Across the Seas – – Ballet Tupa Marka, Chile
• 2016 – Cave of Hands with disable artists
• 2017- “On the Wings of a Dove” – – Ballet Tupa Marka, Chile
• 2017 – Peacock Lake – Balbir Singh Dance Company
• 2018 – The Journey in Quest of Harmony – – Ballet Tupa Marka, Chile
• 2018 – Ikebana, international collaboration project
• 2019 – Follow your Dreams – Balbir Singh Dance Company
• 2019 – Scenes of Childhood – Balbir Singh Dance Company
• 2019 – 1001 Dreams – Balbir Singh Dance Company
• 2019 – Irish & Indian Dreams – Balbir Singh Dance Company and Absolutely Legless Irish Dancers
• 2019 – Portraits of Courage World Dance Gala – Eliot Smith Dance
• 2019 – The Creative Spirit of John Curry on ice – Balbir Singh Dance Company

The UK Premiers of new dance work

2011 -“Tango! 100 years of passion…” by Alma de Tango and Jenny Frances & Ricardo Oria

2012 – VIGOUR by Keniesh Dance

2012 – Threads by Keira Martin

2012 – Salayama and Payapaya by Ballet Nimba

2012 – “JUGNI” by Sonia Sabri Dance Company

2015 – “Oraxis” and “Birds of Paradise” by Element Dance

2016 – “Faces of Dance” by BBC Young Dancers 2015 winners

School residencies and workshops:

2012 – African-Contemporary Dance residency by Keneish Dance

2013 – Contemporary Kathak dance Residency with Sonia Sabri Dance Company

2014 – Contemporary Latin and Brazilian dance Residency with Element Dance Company

2015 – Contemporary Kathak dance Residency with Balbir Singh Dance Company

Schools and community projects:

2011 – World Cultural Ambassadors

2014 – World United by Dance

2017 – Billingham World Explorers

2017 – Billingham Dance Triathlon

2018 – The Journey in Quest of Harmony

2019 – Follow your dreams

Since 2011 BIFF gradually became a unique platform for creative collaboration between international artists, producing innovative and ground-breaking work for its audiences and developing new cross arts and sports audience and participants engagement models.

With the next festival scheduled to take place from 7th to 15th August 2021, we are delighted have launched our year-round BIFF Projects Programme of performances in collaboration with our company in residency, Balbir Singh Dance Company, which will took place in different spaces and venues in January and February 2020, building up to the main festival in 2021.

Due to COVID-19 restriction, the programme of live performances had to be suspended and we are currently will be bringing to you our new digital projects The Two Fridas and The Global Heartbeat of a Small Town, funded by Arts Council England.

Traditional dance can be another term for folk dance, or sometimes even,  ceremonial dance. The term ‘Traditional’ is more frequently used when the emphasis is on the cultural roots of the dance. A folk dance is a dance developed by people that reflect the life of the people of a certain country or region.

When tribal societies in Europe gave way to more structured societies, the old dance forms gradually developed into what is now called folk dances. Although different areas and countries have different styles of dance, most of them share common formations and styles of movement. The earliest and simplest formation, the closed circle, is found in all folk dances and derives from the ritual of circling around an object of worship.

Another common formation, the chain, involves a long line of dancers, often holding hands or linked by handkerchiefs, like in Greek Zobra dance and Bulgarian dance. The leader may trace a complex, serpentine pattern for the others to follow.

In more vigorous dances in some of the countries, like Russia or Georgia, the men, in particular, may crouch, kneel, or even lie on the floor.  Some dances involve large jumps and lifts, like in Polish folk dances, usually with the man seizing the woman by the waist, lifting her into the air, and possibly turning with her.

Social dancing gradually became more elaborate and more lively, with small lifts, jumps, and turns being included. Increasingly, too, the emphasis began to switch from the tight group formations of many earlier dances to the individual couple, and by the end of the 18th century, in dances such as the waltz and, subsequently, the polka, people simply danced in pairs. 

In the 20th century, ballroom dances became very popular, with new dances, such as the tango and fox-trot, and new variations gradually added to the repertoire. The advent of jazz, however, led to other forms of social dance as Western music fell under the influence of the descendants of African slaves in America. During the jazz era of the 1920s, dances like the Charleston and the Black Bottom not only showed the syncopated rhythms, bent knees, crouched torsos, and hip and pelvic movements of African dance but also broke through the dominance of the couple form.

At Billingham Festival we strive to present a fusion and showcase all styles of dance from all over the world.

Billingham Festival is a unique organisation being organised and run purely by volunteers. Over one-hundred volunteers of all ages and abilities, from generation to generation, work annually at our festival, enjoying international intercultural exchanges and friendship that it brings.

If you are interested in joining our vibrant team of volunteers, please get in touch via info@billinghamfestival.co.uk

Volunteers work in different areas

· Selling tickets and merchandise

· Helping with housekeeping and meal service

· Running the festival arena

· Organising Children’s Club and Workshops

· Organising transport

· Driving our guests

· Assisting as Parade Marshalls

· Assisting the international performers as guides and interpreters

· Distributing festival leaflets and flyers

· Promoting festival on social media

· Helping at fundraising events

· Setting up festival exhibitions of children’s artwork

· Making photos and videos of the festival performances and other activities

· Taking part in a Youth Focus group to help us shape the future of our festival (age 14-20)