Dance and movement are intrinsic to the human experience – we learn to dance before we learn to speak. Yet as an art form, dance is often marginalized. The Celebrate Dance Festival aims to change that by making dance performances accessible and free.

The festival, which starts Friday, Aug. 20, presents the region’s dance companies, groups, collectives and solo artists in three days of performance, lectures and workshops in Balboa Park. More than 10,000 people attended last year’s event. Now in its ninth year, the festival will feature more than 75 companies and 700 artists, including some of the region’s most distinguished dance professionals.

Diversity and accessibility are at the heart of the event, according to members of Eveoke Dance Theatre, which orchestrates the event every year. The festival presents a range of performance comprising various ethnic heritages, abilities and styles such as ballet, bellydance, flamenco, hip hop, jazz, modern, tap and more.

“Our philosophical and working statement is that we provide access – full and complete, unfettered access – to both sides of the curtain, meaning that on stage, everybody is welcome to join Celebrate Dance Festival,” said show producer Chris Hall.

The festival has been in the works since February, when Eveoke sent out more than 200 letters of invitation to dancers throughout the region. There are no auditions and the organizers refuse to discriminate based on type of dance, ethnic background, skill level or age range, said Hall. This year the highly inclusive festival involves companies from San Diego, Los Angeles and Tijuana, as well as Ellis Wood Dance from New York.

“It’s so incredibly, beautifully, just exquisitely diverse,” said Eveoke artistic director Gina Angelique. “It’s really just the most wonderful thing, and it can only be that way because it’s free.”

Performances take place in the 600-seat Casa Del Prado Theatre and on two outdoor stages. Event highlights include performances by Jean Isaacs’ San Diego Dance Theater, Lower Left Performance Collective, Urban Tribal Dance Company and Tijuana’s Ricardo Peralta Danza Performa. Free workshops will turn audience members into participants, including Kathryn Irey’s three-hour workshop on creative movement and Lower Left’s workshop on contact improvisation. Also not to be missed is Eveoke’s lively hip-hop workshop and demo.

Eveoke, a 10-year-old, San Diego-based dance company known for grassroots social activism and making political statements with its art, will also present three works: a performance from its haunting show Mothers and two pieces set to music and spoken word by socio-political poet Ursula Rucker. All three works wrestle with current world events, said Angelique.

“We’re just putting in our two cents, trying to find a nonpartisan connection to what’s going on in the world, which is around how we value each other when we make economic decisions,” she said.

And while Eveoke has produced the Celebrate Dance Festival for nine years running – on its own dime until recent years – the company is more interested in promoting the event than promoting itself. Through the festival, Eveoke hopes to support and expand the dance community in San Diego, said Hall. In the lobby of the Casa Del Prado Theatre, a dance information center will be set up to provide brochures, program information and upcoming events for every group involved.

“It’s something we realized last year and the year before, that the dance festival is something much bigger than us,” said Hall. “It occurred to me that – if you think of Street Scene – who produces Street Scene?” he asked by way of comparison, referring to the huge music festival held in the streets of downtown each September. “Ask the person who comes to see their favorite band, and they don’t care. They’re going to see the bands, right? That’s the nature of how this festival has grown. What’s more important is that it’s celebratory; it’s bringing the dance community together annually and 10,000 plus people. It’s a big community-building event more than anything.”