Latvians have been dancing since ancient times ― since before Christ and before the written language. And yet the very notion of Latvian dance wasn't conceived before the 1870s. The history of Latvian ballet begins in 1870 when the actors of the Riga Latvian Theatre were required to both sing and dance. The father of the Latvian theatre Ādolfs Alunāns was also our very first professional dancer. It was quite common to engage dancers from Warsaw and Moscow at the time. Each self-respecting company founded its own dance troupe and training system. Classical ballet it was not ― more like pure joy of dance combining various traditional moves with classical positions.

Before the previous turn of the century we didn't have a musical theatre of our own: the only companies were Russian and German. When the Latvian Opera was founded in the autumn of 1918, the first production included ballet numbers as well. For a number of years starting 1911, when choreographer Mārtiņš Kauliņš formed the first professional ballet troupe, the dancers had been performing nothing but divertissements during the opera shows.

In 1937 a celebration of folk dance and gymnastics was held in Riga by the Aizsargi voluntary paramilitary league. More than twenty folk dance groups, all in all 720 dancers, were on stage at the same time. The population of Latvia was around 1.5 million at the time, which means that proportionally the number of participants was considerable. What they performed were not simple folk dances fit for a jolly open-air party: they danced in accordance with the choreographers’ vision. There were hardly any professionals ― most dancers had never attended a single ballet class: their skill was a product of regular practice in local dance groups. They danced for their own pleasure, and the choreographers certainly tried very hard. There was a shift away from trhe traditional folk dances toward highly choreographed productions. In the 1950s, with the appearance of the Daile and Sakta dance groups, professional and amateur folk dance went their separate ways. Thousands of dance lovers take part in our quinquennial Dance Festival which has become an occasion for national celebration. Just imagine ― 15 000 people danced together at the last Dance festival!

These days there are more than 800 folk dance groups and dozens of modern dance schools in Latvia where former prize-winners of international contests and professional dancers --  Uldis Žagata, Jānis Purviņš, Jānis Ērglis, Agris Daņiļevičs  -- pass on their skills and knowledge to dance enthusiasts.