Every year, the Vail Valley Foundation brings some of the best dancers in the world to the Vail Dance Festival, which was showcasing hot moves before So You Think You Can Dance was even a glimmer of an idea in some television executive’s head. This year is no exception: The festival kicks off today and continues through Tuesday, August 10, offering up everything from tonight’s tap-dancing superstar, Savion Glover, to the August 10 Colorado-based BreakEFX.

“Every year we try to change things up a little bit,” says the festival’s Shelley Woodworth. This year, there will be four world premieres, including “something that the Vail audiences have never seen before, the Beijing dance group,” Woodworth notes. Beijing Dance/LTDX will debut a piece called “Solitude in Numbers,” created by renowned Tibetan choreographer Sang Jijia. “They are the only non-state-sponsored contemporary dance group in China,” Woodworth says. “They really bring a creative, interesting side to mod-ern dance that Colorado audiences have never seen before; this is the only place you can see it.”

That performance is on August 3; other highlights include the aforementioned Savion Glover (who performed at two sold-out shows at last year’s festival), artist-in-residence Larry Keigwin, a focus on tango by Argentinians Natalia Hills and Gabriel Missé, and much more. For information, visit www.vaildance.org.
July 27-Aug. 10, 2010