LEWISTON — Hip-hop pioneer Rennie Harris’ Puremovement and other renowned contemporary dance companies headline the 30th anniversary season of the Bates Dance Festival.

To mark the occasion, the festival will highlight choreographers whose long-term creative development has been nurtured by the festival.

Other dance companies taking part in the six-week festival, which features classic works and Maine premieres, are Kyle Abraham/Abraham.in.Motion, Kate Weare Company and Keigwin + Company.

 The dance festival will run from July 13 through Aug. 11 on the Bates College campus.

Opening will be Harris and his legendary company, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year with a touring program of greatest hits. Performances take place at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, July 13-14, in Schaeffer Theatre, 305 College St.

One of hip-hop’s leading ambassadors, Harris founded his company in the belief that hip-hop is the most important original expression of a new generation. In 1996, the Bates Dance Festival hosted the first of several residencies by Rennie Harris Puremovement. Harris’s first major work, “Rome & Jewels” went on to tour internationally for more than eight years.

For its return to the festival, Puremovement will present recent works “Breath,” “Nina” and “Three B-Boys and a Girl.” Also on the program are excerpts from signature works “P-Funk,” “Students of the Asphalt Jungle” and “Rome & Jewels” featuring original Puremovement  members returning to celebrate the company’s anniversary season.

Harris is a powerful spokesperson for the significance of street origins in dance. He is well-versed in the vernacular of hip-hop, which encompasses techniques of B-boy (a misnomer for “break dancing”), house dancing, stepping and other styles that emerged from American inner cities.

Harris has been compared to 20th-century dance legends Alvin Ailey and Bob Fosse.

This season, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater repertory  featured both Harris’ “Love Stories,” a collaboration with Judith Jamison and Robert Battle; and his “Home,” created to mark World AIDS Day.

One of Dance Magazine’s 2009 “25 to Watch,” choreographer Kyle Abraham will bring his company, Abraham.in.Motion, to Bates to perform his latest work, “Live! The Realest MC.” Performances will take place at 8 p.m. Thursday and Saturday, July 19 and 21, at Schaeffer Theatre.

Inspired by Abraham’s upbringing in Pittsburgh in the 1970s and ’80s, “Live” also references his 2007 solo work, “Inventing Pookie Jenkins,” and the story of Pinocchio. The theme common to all three works is the search for acceptance.

Abraham developed and performed his provocative and acclaimed piece “The Radio Show” while participating in the 2009 Bates Dance Festival’s emerging choreographers program. Hailed as “the best and brightest creative talent to emerge in New York City in the age of Obama” by Out Magazine, Abraham creates dance that probes the complex relationships between identity and personal history.

The Kate Weare Company will present Weare’s new work, “Garden,” an exploration of the depths of human relationships. Performances will take place at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, July 27-28, at Schaeffer Theatre.

“Garden” draws on primitive issues of origination, collective identity and safety amid the uncontrollable natural world. Two men and two women frolic, flirt and fight in the wake of the unknown, eliciting a world of sensuality and innocence disturbed by dark undercurrents.

Weare has been commissioned by Scottish Dance Theatre, Australia’s Buzz Dance Theatre, CityDance Ensemble and Axis Dance Company. She received a 2009 Princess Grace Award in Choreography for her work commissioned by NYC’s Paradigm.

With rawness and precision, she exposes a humanism that is contemporary, disquieting and profoundly stirring. Seen most recently at the Bates Dance Festival in 2009, Weare and company will begin developing its next work, “Dark Lark,” during this summer’s residency.

Festival alum Larry Keigwin and his champion dancers, Keigwin + Company, will return with an evening of Maine premieres. Performances will take place at 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, Aug. 2-3, in Schaeffer Theatre. A special gala performance will also be presented at 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 4, followed by an anniversary party with the artists.

Keigwin’s work is witty, kinetic and musically responsive, mixing the stretched lines of ballet with the weighted, blunt quality of contemporary dance — and often with everyday gestures and pop-culture references. 

The premieres by Keigwin + Company will include a new male quartet, “Natural Selection;” “Triptych; “Trio,” with music by Adam Crystal; and a new Keigwin solo.

Keigwin attended the festival as a student more than 20 years ago. He has since  joined the festival as a dancer with Mark Dendy, as an emerging choreographer, as a faculty member and as the leader of his own troupe founded in 2003.

Recent Keigwin commissions have come from Works & Process at the Guggenheim, Juilliard School, New York City Ballet’s Choreographic Institute and Martha Graham Dance Company. In 2010, Keigwin was named the Vail International Dance Festival’s first artist-in-residence, during which time he created and premiered a new work with four of ballet’s most prominent stars.

Also in 2010, he staged the largest public fashion show in New York City’s history, the opening event of Fashion Week. “Fashion’s Night Out: The Show” was produced by Vogue and featured more than 150 of the industry’s top models.

In 2011, Keigwin choreographed the new musical “Tales of the City” at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, as well as the new off-Broadway production of “Rent,” now running at New World Stages. Most recently, Keigwin was commissioned to create a new work for the Royal New Zealand Ballet.