DAO Dance Art Online is an international dance competition you enter from your own studio. You register, we give you your music, you record your dance to it where you are, you upload it, and a panel of judges on several continents scores it. Nobody flies anywhere.
This is DAO Dance Art Online 2026, the first edition. It is open to every style, every age and every country: no federation membership, no national selection, no qualifying chain. Dancers from a school and dancers with no school at all enter on exactly the same terms.
| 1 | Register — free. Choose your dances and leave us a link to a public page that shows you or your school exist. For a choreography, tell us what music you would like. You get your entry number straight away. |
| 2 | Get your music. Every entry is danced to the music we give it, and it appears on your entry page. For a choreography the music is made for you, and if it does not suit you, you can ask for a replacement. |
| 3 | Record and upload your video. A phone is enough — production quality is not judged and never affects your score. Nothing has been paid yet. |
| 4 | We check your club, your fee level and your video, and send a payment link only for an entry accepted into the competition, with what was decided and what it costs. |
| 5 | Dispute it, or pay it. You pay last, and only for a performance that has already been checked and accepted. |
Your recording is a single continuous take with nothing cut, sped up or filtered, and it opens with you facing the camera and saying aloud that this video is for DAO Dance Art Online 2026, with your own entry number. Four seconds, in English or in your own language. That is what makes an online competition honest: a video made for something else cannot contain it.
Entry fees start at $6, and each further dance costs less. There is no travel to pay for, and the same amount does not mean the same thing everywhere: fees are set at three tiers by country, using the World Bank income classification — the first dance costs $12, $9 or $6 — and you are told your own price before you pay anything. Entries submitted by a registered club cost a third less. And 100 entries are set aside at no cost for dancers for whom the fee is the reason they would not take part — a short letter is enough, no documents, no proof of income.
Prizes are teaching, time and attention rather than money: lessons and masterclasses paid for in the winner's own country, open seminars, recorded critiques from named international judges, and scholarships offered by judges themselves.
DAO Dance Art Online was founded in August 2026 by two partners: Contaste, the competition platform, and Artistic Dance Factory, Seychelles. It is not a federation and is not affiliated with one; the titles awarded here are DAO Dance Art Online titles.
The full rules are under General Information → Rules and regulations. Read them before you record — the video requirements are short, and they are the part people get wrong.
