Greeting from Mrs. Yordanka Fandukova, mayor of Sofia.

In March 2018 Sofia will host the international festival Spring Forward by Aerowaves – the largest European platform for contemporary dance. We are honoured that Sofia is chosen to host such a big event especially during the Bulgarian presidency of the Council of the European Union. The job we did together with Derida Dance Center to make this project happen is an evidence of the cooperation between Sofia Municipality and the creative environments. One of the top priorities of Sofia are the investments in cultural development and providing access to huge variety of cultural events. Our city ranks among the top ten in Europe's capitals, contributing to the cultural and creative industries in the economy. More than 8% of town’s economics is generated by the cultural industries. Promoting creative industries is an important part of our cultural policy. We’ve developed two mechanisms for financing cultural products – “Culture” program and the Calendar of cultural events. Derida Dance Center is one of the strategic partners of Sofia Municipality and together we manage to build and bring successful contemporary performative arts projects to life. Through their Residency program which we support annually we’ve helped over 50 independent projects of artist from all over the world with which we have been able to strengthen the European dimension in the development of the sector. During the Spring Forward festival TOP 20 emerging European choreographers will be presented in Sofia. This is an example that through the mutual partnership between the Sofia Municipality and the creative sector we are working on presenting contemporary art at its highest level and we are actively involved in both Europe and the whole world’s cultural policies.