Liz Lea is in her second year as curator of Australian Dance Week in Canberra. But the dancer and choreographer has been involved with the event since coming to the national capital and working with Ausdance ACT in 2009.

"It's a week focused on celebration of dance in Australia," she says. It begins on Saturday April 29, which is International Dance Day, and runs until Sunday May 7.

The Canberra part of the celebration is wide-ranging in styles and dancers, from professionals to amateurs, youths to elders, solo works to larger group creations. Lea says it continues last year's theme of Dance in Different Spaces and Places.

It will be launched on Saturday at 10am at Belconnen Fresh Food Markets Piazza by Arts Minister Gordon Ramsay with free performances by various dance groups including Wiradjuri Echoes, Feel the Music Deaf Dancers, and dance artists from Ausdance ACT's youth mentoring program Escalate. There will also be free dance displays at the markets on May 6 by dance schools and groups on May 6 from 10am.

One of the different places for dance in the week is a hospital paediatrics ward where the dance work Under the Sea, inspired by the Great Barrier Reef, will be performed just for the young patients by its creators, Lea and Debora Di Centa.

While that's a private performance, linking the fixing of the reef with the healing of the sick, most of the Dance Week program is public.

Lea will go from under the sea to under the stars with The Galaxy Project on May 5 at 7.30pm.

"I'm running a series of performances at Mount Stromlo - it's part of one of the observatory nights that night," she says.

The Galaxy Project is a series of short works inspired by astronomy research at Mt Stromlo.

"I'm doing short works and a fantastic woman named Jazida is performing a solo."

Continuing the science theme, In-Sync by Lea and Alison Plevey on May 6 and 7 at the Courtyard Studio, Canberra Theatre Centre at 7pm is a series of solo works inspired by research into ecology, psychology, robotics and genetics. There will also be an excerpt from a new work choreographed by Jack Ziesing for QL2 Dance Canberra.

Belconnen Arts Centre will present Dance on the Edge.on April 29 and 30 with a program featuringThe Australian Dance Party (Alison Plevey, Holly Diggle and Olivia Fyfe) in TWO, , Debora di Centa in NaturaI, Eliza Sanders in Let Resting Dogs Tell Fibs, Emma Strapps, Shiara Astle, Rocio Escobar Gutiérrez and Adam Broinowski in Flight/less, Paul Jesseph Base Hickman and Kathleen Lott in ism and Flight Year performing in anxious depressed obsessed.

For fans of dance on film, there will be three screenings of The Paris Opera Ballet's production of George Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream at Palace Electric on May 6, 7 and 10.

And, of course, for those who would like to try dancing themselves, there will be plenty of opportunities to do so in a range of styles, so check out the program and see what's on offer.