For more than two decades we have been celebrating the differences of bodies, genders and identities. We do it all year round: in a festival and in its special projects.
What’s new?
Queering the Museum
Identity, participation, and cultural heritage are the focus of a day of discussion in Bologna as part of Gender Bender Festival 2025
Playground, a free dance workshop led by OPERABIANCO
The call for the free dance workshop conducted by the Opera Bianco company is now online. Open to children ages 8 to 12 and people over 60, with and without experience.
DNAppunti coreografici 2025: the finalist projects
The 4 projects that will be presented on 19 October 2025 at Roma Europa Festival
Gender Bender Festival 2025 is coming!
From October 30th to November 8th, you can find us all over Bologna and at DAS with dance performances, films, meetings, talks, and parties you don’t wanna miss. In the meantime, watch the trailer!
Our projects
Discover Teatro Arcobaleno
Teatro Arcobaleno, the project for children and teenagers that the Gender Bender Festival organizes together with a large network of partners in Italy, is back. For the 2025/2026 school year, the program offers a wide range of free workshops and performance about movement, dance and body practices for students and teachers.
A SPECIAL YEAR
3 workshops and 3 dance shows connect artists and the community of Bologna in a collective project that ran throughout 2023 as part of Portici Festival Festival – Heritage meets creativity. Gender Bender brought the international company Igor x Moreno, the Italian choreographer Daniele Ninarello and the Dutch/German choreographer Patricia Carolin Mai to Bologna for the production of three shows, after a period of co-creation with non-professionals. This is the story of those magical months.
DISCOVER PERFORMING GENDER – DANCING IN YOUR SHOES
Performing Gender – Dancing In Your Shoes is a dance project that aims to develop a link between culture professionals and some local communities through a discussion on gender in the European dance system. The project involves 8 European countries, led by the Gender Bender Festival and Il Cassero LGBTI+ Center.
Gender Bender is produced by
