Expressing love, sadness, dreams through songs and dance and feel the highest notes of emotion

Nearly every Latvian has sung in a choir or danced folk dances at some point in their lives.  The Nationwide Song and Dance Festival is a collective dancing and singing event of the grandest scale and with unmatched enthusiasm.  It is the oldest and most significant cultural festival in Latvia, dating back to 1873.

Like the Olympic Games, the festival is an eagerly awaited event, taking place once every five years. Nearly 40 000 participants from all parts of Latvia and participants from other countries come to Riga to celebrate the festival. Choirs, dance groups, brass bands and folk ensembles perform in different venues throughout Latvia with the main event held in Riga.

The week-long festival includes small and large concerts at various places in the city.  In massive show of choreographic art, 13 500 dancers perform simultaneously intricate symbolic dances .  The Festival ends with a procession through the streets of Riga and a magnificent closing concert on an open-air stage with 20 000 singers on a single stage.

Māra Ķimele (theater director): “Latvian folk dances are performed in pairs, and are very sensuous.  They are similar to Chinese energy exercises. You need to move in step and communicate with your partner, which Latvians are very good at.”

In 2003, the Nationwide Song and Dance Festivals of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were included in UNESCO’s prestigious Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity masterpiece list as a unique, cultural phenomenon.

The next Latvian Nationwide Song and Dance Festival will take place in Riga in 2013.