Dancer, choreographer, and teacher Jean Appolon has long found dance to be a vital way to communicate, a way to heal, and a way to bring people together. Dance can do that, he says, because it’s an art that’s “nonjudgmental, and it’s a place where people feel safe, where people can really open up.”

His contemporary dance company, Jean Appolon Expressions (JAE), will be bringing its call for openness and connection to Castle Hill’s Edgewood Farm this coming weekend. It will be the first time the Boston-based company that plumbs Haitian folkloric culture has appeared at the Provincetown Dance Festival.

JAE recently returned from teaching 100 people in the Dominican Republic — young people who would not normally have access to dance training.

As for dance’s communicative purpose, Appolon has chosen two pieces that he believes have something important to say. Traka, which means trauma in his native Haiti, and Pouvoir, or power.

Traka, he says, is meant to help people understand how they can “take the initiative to face their trauma by moving.” In it, Appolon wants people to see the power of getting involved in the community and being activists.

Pouvoir speaks to the kind of power people in authority exert. “It is a piece that calls on leaders to do better,” he says.

At the Aug. 23-24 festival, Appolon wants audience members to enjoy and find meaning in the dancer’s work. But he also hopes they might feel the urge to express themselves by moving around the Edgewood Farms landscape themselves. “We want people to feel like they are part of the dance, part of the art, and they can really experiment with it,” he says.

JAE is one of three new companies among the six in the 18th annual dance festival. Audiences will find a wide range of styles on the stage during the festival plus slightly different programs for the two performances.

Festival artistic director Adam Miller has always tried to set up varied styles at what he calls the Outer Cape’s premier showcase for professional dance. More than 70 different solo or group dancers have visited over the years. Miller looks for companies that celebrate diversity and the legacies of different cultures; he welcomes and supports artist-activists; but what he says he most seeks for local fans is artistic expression.

He wants to be able to say, “You saw something that celebrated queer culture, but you also saw classical Indian dance, you saw ballet, you saw tap, you’ve seen entertainment that is as broad-ranged as the American art scene,” says Miller, whose family has spent time in Wellfleet for 50 years. “I ask that the work celebrates a cultural ideal.”

After years at the Provincetown Theater, the festival moved post-pandemic to the new outdoor Sam’s Stage in Truro named for Miller’s late brother, who was director of the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. The venue has attracted fans of all ages to picnic and settle onto blankets and chairs, and also to do what Appolon hopes for and move.

Also new to the festival for 2024 is Boston Dance Theater, a contemporary repertory company with international choreographers that describes itself as committed to works of sociopolitical relevance. Its Truro pieces will be Itzik Galili’s If as If, with themes of longing, tenderness, and doubt; and Marco Goecke’s Äffi, about pain, grief, and loss, set to Johnny Cash’s music.

Miller scheduled Ballet Rhode Island this year because of recent repertoire additions: “I’m always looking for people who are rediscovering or showing the validity of contemporary ballet in relation to its classical heritage,” he says. “Ballet Rhode Island is doing a really good job of that.”

This year’s festival — dedicated to supporter Dian Reynolds, who also happens to be Miller’s mother — features several returning performers: classical Indian dancers Rachna Agrawal and Laya Raj; Rovaco, an athletic contemporary-dance troupe from New York City whose work explores themes of relationships, sex, capitalism, and queerness; and tap dancer Khalid Hill, who’ll be performing with saxophonist Gregory Grover and bassist Max Ridley.

This is the third festival for Hill, who’s also a teacher, actor (Bring in Da’ Noise, Bring in Da’ Funk), choreographer, and artistic director (15 seasons of Boston’s The Urban Nutcracker). He’s soloed for Hillary Clinton and Maya Angelou but says he’s now rarely on stage. For this Truro chance, he plans to stay grounded in the traditions of 1930s and ’40s rhythm tappers.

Hill expects to begin a cappella, with just sounds from his tapping feet through the outdoor sound system before musicians join. Combining tap with the musicians’ long experience playing improvisational jazz, he says, they’ll be largely working the pieces out when they get together here — partly before the performance, but mostly during it.

“You loosely set what the tune is, then keep it wide open so we can be improvisational live,” Hill says. The result is “a big conversation of musical rhythmic sequences that’s playing out in front of the audience.”

Like JAE, wants to engage patrons. He doesn’t expect them to dance, but he sees them as part of the performance nonetheless. “I want to break that wall and have it be like sharing,” he says. “As they’re responding, I’m responding.”

Over the years, Miller has presented artists who originated in Africa, the Caribbean, Russia, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Cambodia, Japan, India, China, and Canada. There have been about 20 world premieres, and the dance forms represented at the festival include flamenco, Chinese traditional dance, hip-hop, Afro-Caribbean, Irish dance, ballroom, and jazz.

“I’m always trying to balance a mix of favorites and supporting new artists,” Miller says. “And I don’t censor anything. We’ve had nudity,” he says. “We’ve had sand, we’ve had salt, we’ve had water — all kinds of things have happened on that stage. And I love the surprise of that and the spontaneity of that. It’s been a good place for artists to present new work.”

On Their Feet

The event: Provincetown Dance Festival
The time: Friday-Saturday, Aug. 23-24, 7 p.m. (rain dates Aug. 30-31)
The place: Sam’s Stage (outdoors) at Edgewood Farm, Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill, 3 Edgewood Way, Truro
The cost: $40, students $30, in advance; $45 day of performance, at 508-349-7511, castlehill.org, provincetowndancefestival.com