Dance played an important role in the Hollywood Bowl's early years. Pioneer choreographers like Ernest Belcher, Ruth St. Denis & Ted Shawn, and Norma Gould created original works for the Bowl during the 1920s and 30s. Later, touring companies like the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, Martha Graham Dance Company, Ballet Folklorico de Mexico, the Moiseyev Dance Company, and the Joffrey Ballet performed at the Bowl.

• Video: Dance at the Bowl

Dance pioneers, many of whom were rejecting the restrictions of ballet and searching for freer and more expressive forms of movement, saw Los Angeles as a utopian place to create and teach. The Hollywood Bowl provided a venue to showcase new work and a place for dancers to develop. Young dancers who performed at the Bowl with choreographer Ernest Belcher included Maria Tallchief (the great Balanchine ballerina), actress/dancers Gwen Verdon, Cyd Charisse, Nanette Fabray, Rita Hayworth, and Belcher's daughter Marge Champion and her husband Gower Champion.

The air was cool at night. I stretched out my arms in the moonlight and flew. I raced and raced in the cool night expanse, on the largest stage in the world. Around me the mountains ribbed the sky. Under my feet lay the beat of a full symphony orchestra.

— Agnes De Mille, dancer and choreographer

Major international dance companies introduced world cultures to Bowl audiences as early as the late 1930s, when the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo first brought Russian classical ballet to the Bowl. In 1967, at the height of the Cold War, impresario Sol Hurok brought a festival of Russian Music and Dance to the Bowl that included both ballet (the Bolshoi) and folk dance (groups from Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia) and had lines of ticket buyers stretching from the box office all the way down Peppertree Lane. Baryshnikov danced at the Bowl in 1979 with the New York City Ballet. With the great interest in world music that began to grow in the 1990s, dance from India, China, Mexico, Brazil, West Africa, and many more has been presented on the Bowl stage.