2026 Tour of Homes: April 24-26 | Festival: Sat April 25 & Sun April 26

Atlanta's largest all volunteer festival!

Dance Festival

Live Performances

  • Sat April 25 & Sun April 26
  • 4pm

Film Showing

  • Sun April 26
  • 2pm
  • Run Time: ~1hr
The Inman Park Festival’s Inman Park Dance Festival celebrates a major milestone during the 2026 Festival, 25 years of celebrating the art of dance!
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2026 Program

The 25th Anniversary Inman Park Dance Festival will celebrate its milestone anniversary with a selection of companies and dance schools from the Atlanta area. The Dance Festiva’s two free performances will take place in the historic Trolley Barn, 963 Edgewood Avenue, on Saturday, April 25 and Sunday, April 26 at 4:00 pm. The same family-friendly program will be presented each day, the show runs for an hour and includes short artist conversations. This year’s participating dance organizations are Ballethnic, Dance Foundry, Emory University Dance & Movement Studies Program, Full Radius Dance,, Monica Hogan Danceworks, and Movement Arts Atlanta.
  • Ballethnic joined the dance festival lineup in 2005. This company has an over 30-year history of blending classical ballet with African dance forms. This includes putting African dance movements sur les pointes or on pointe.
  • Emory University Dance & Movement Studies Program returns to the Dance Festival this year with the work of one of its Honors Program students. This well-established and highly regarded dance program offers both majors and minors in dance with a focus on modern dance which is grounded in a strong liberal arts environment.
  • Dance Foundry is new to the Dance Festival line-up. This school participates in the training of the Royal Academy of Dancing which is an internationally recognized graded curriculum. One of their students working toward her Solo Seal, RAD’s heights preprofessional ranking, will perform.
  • Full Radius Dance has been a part of every Dance Festival since its inception. This outstanding dance company marking 35 years is a physically integrated modern dance company. This unique perspective on movement includes artists with and without apparent and non-apparent disabilities.
  • Monica Hogan Danceworks is a part of the dance festival for the third time this year. This athletic company’s work focuses on shared human experience. This year, they will be performing an expert from their full-length work Temporary Elsewhere.
  • Movement Arts Atlanta will be presenting a work featuring its student dancers, Coral Movement Suite which movements emulate those of the sea and its inhabitants. This Inman Park base dance school is celebrating 15 years of providing training for students ages three through adult.
We invite you to take a seat at this year’s Dance Festival either after the hubbub of the parade on Saturday or during the leisurely pace of Sunday afternoon, you will not be disappointed. You will see loads of talent, be entertained and see some of what Atlanta’s rich dance community has to offer.

25 Years of Celebrating Dance in 2026!

Like the neighborhood festival that hosts it, the Inman Park Dance Festival is unique. It is the only free-admission dance festival that presents both classical ballet and modern works on the same program and pays all its participating companies. As stated so elegantly by a neighbor, “It has become an important part of festival and adds so much elegance and artistic substance. It is delightful to see children, and adults, experience performances they may otherwise never have the opportunity to see.”

Since its inaugural year, the Dance Festival has presented 51 free, open-to the public
performances, welcomed 26,000+ audience members, hosted 26 different dance companies,
presented the work of 63 choreographers and paid $142,250 in honorarium to participating
companies. The goal of the Dance Festival is to celebrate the depth and breadth of Atlanta and
Georgia’s dance community and to encourage audience to patronize presented dance
organizations beyond their Festival experience.

When then neighborhood newcomer, Carolyn Stine McLaughlin proposed presenting dance in the Trolley Barn during Festival in late 2000, her proposal was met with skepticism; would Festival goers really want to sit inside for an hour in the midst of Festival’s clamor? But McLaughlin persisted and pledged to raise the money needed to pay the performing companies if the Dance Festival could use the venue and be promoted as part of Festival. At the first Dance Festival presented in 2001, there was only one performance on the Saturday afternoon of Festival. It attracted a healthy crowd of four hundred. The a headline in the press stated, “The start of something big?” (Bookman, Julie. “The start of something big?” Atlanta Journal- Constitution, 27 Apr. 2001, p. P12.). This inaugural year is legendary among neighbors because McLaughlin also ran the neighborhood’s Butterfly Ball the evening before and then gave birth to her first child the day after. The second year, the event added an additional performance on Sunday and saw attendance hit 1,200. From 2001 through 2009, the Dance Festival was supported financially by neighbors and public and private funders with the Festival providing in- kind support. In 2010, the Festival Committee decided to ensure the Dance Festival became a permanent part of Festival having the Festival cover all costs associate with the Dance Festival.

McLaughlin continues to manage and direct the Dance Festival. Her curation has brought to the

festival stage historic works integral to dance history by choreographers such as Marius Petipa,

Isadora Duncan, and José Limón and current works by important living choreographers like

Douglas Scott, Jonathan Reidel, and Sarah J. Hillmer. Some years, choreography has spanned

350 years of dance, all performed by local artists.

McLaughlin continues to manage and direct the Dance Festival. Her curation has brought to the festival stage historic works integral to dance history by choreographers such as Marius Petipa, Isadora Duncan, and José Limón and current works by important living choreographers like Douglas Scott, Jonathan Reidel, and Sarah J. Hillmer. Some years, choreography has spanned 350 years of dance, all performed by local artists.
The Inman Park Dance Festival is evidence of the Inman Park Festival and Tour of Homes’ commitment to arts. Each year, the last weekend in April becomes a celebration of architecture, visual art, and performing arts including dance.