Australians love to dance, according to Chunky Move founder Gideon Obarzanek.

"Australia has always had fantastic dancers, really great choreographers, and people love to dance - we dance way more than people realise," he said.

But with the arts and culture sector under economic stress for almost a decade, dance has been feeling the strain too, he said.

It's hoped an inaugural dance biennale will help the sector get its groove back, as part of Melbourne's 2026 winter arts festival Rising.

Obarzanek has stepped back from his most recent role as co-artistic director of the festival to run the biennale initiative.

"It's a bit of a pilot project, but we can see this becoming really, really substantial in a couple of years' time," he said.

Obarzanek argues Melbourne is Australia's dance capital due to its critical mass of companies, with performers and choreographers moving to the city for its dance scene.

As well as Chunky Move, the big names include Lucy Guerin Inc and Stephanie Lake Company, while Melbourne is also the home of The Australian Ballet.

For the biennale, Chunky Move will reprise its seminal 2006 piece Glow, which used technology so dancers could control music and light.

Lucy Guerin Inc premieres The Forest, exploring the hold trees have on our imaginations, from myths to forest folktales and even eco-horror.

Other highlights include RED from Queensland's Dancenorth, a red-haired duo performing inside a giant translucent plastic dome - which is being emptied of air.

The biennale also brings some of the world's best dancers and choreographers Down Under, including Northern Irish choreographer Oona Doherty's Hard to Be Soft: A Belfast Prayer.

Then there's renowned New Zealand street dancers The Royal Family Dance Crew showing off choreographer Parris Goebel's Polyswagg style, favoured by the likes of Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Rihanna.

As part of the biennale, the Flinders Street Station Ballroom will reopen to the public for a program of classes titled Land of 1000 Dances, with lessons in everything from Swing to Boot Scooting, Bollywood, Jazz, Vogueing, K-Pop, Salsa, and Polyswagg.

One event that will not be on the program, however, is a First Nations self-determined contemporary dance work.

In a statement issued with First Nations dance leaders known as the Blak Futures Collective, the biennale acknowledged this gap.

"Australian Dance Biennale recognises this as a significant gap for a national dance platform taking place on Aboriginal land and accepts responsibility for this outcome," it said.

The time frame, resourcing and cultural development conditions were inadequate to host a gathering of the collective at the 2026 biennale, according to the statement.

But the inaugural program does feature Indigenous diaspora artists and First Nations collaboration, and the event is committed to resourcing First Nations-led programming in future, it said.

Rising runs from May 27 to June 8.