Dancers have always made transfers in their careers: at the end of a performative life, they have to think about a ‘second career’. Dance only for the theatre stage, or art for art sake is an outdated reality. Dance art offers much more.
Today a lot of dancers explore the potentiality of dance with, for and in a variety of sectors. One recent development in dance & movement practice is the use of dance for societal means: tools from dance and movement techniques and creative concepts are integrated in the practices of health, personal development, creative thinking, social development projects and many other fields. Current dance practice offers opportunities to contribute directly to society.
Project
The project aims to redefine dance education, contribute to career development and the positioning of dance in society from an inclusive approach. How can dancers diversify and pro-actively create their own job opportunities, not only as performers but to expand the benefits of dance in society? What does it mean to be a dance artist right now? How can we facilitate an ongoing conversation across sectors, cultures and disciplines?
Each partner worked around a theme connected to inclusive approaches and the transferable skills of the dance artist - Re-thinking Bodies (Antwerp), Re-designing Spaces (Tilburg) and Somatics (Prague) - and created a practice based research trajectory:
- Dance and Diversity (Royal Conservatoire Antwerp): Focus on the value of dance with and for mixed abilities
- Dance and Public Space (Fontys Dance Academy, Tilburg): Focus on the value of dance as cross sectoral practice in public spaces through spatial awareness
- Dance and Somatics (Duncan Centre, Prague): Focus on the value of dance as an embodied practice
By organizing different residences (in Antwerp, Tilburg and Prague), each institution shared its theme/vision to acknowledge dance students the potential of contemporary craftsmanship to transfer skills, values and knowledge into other domains of human life.
Dance and Diversity – Rethinking bodies
'Rethinking Bodies' is a project, started by the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp, aiming to redefine the vision of the body in contemporary dance and exploring new insights in dance education. The intensive research/study program includes workshops, debates, lectures and performances. Different symposia have been organized in the past, inviting (international) specialists in the field of inclusion dance, to work with bachelor students of the dance department and dancers with different (physical) constraints.
Online outcome
By sharing our outcomes and collaborations on an online platform ‘www.inclusivedance.eu’, we hope to exemplify and inspire ways to transfer this knowledge and experience into other practices, contexts and social environments. We are convinced that dance can learn from other sectors and other sectors in society can learn from artistic movement & dance practice. We value the qualities of dance to offer new creative strategies for non-dance focused contexts and challenges.