EDN Atelier: Tools for Transformation

The environmental and sustainability questions and artistic practices in connection to climate change

The EDN Atelier took place on July 7-8, 2022 in Dresden. Atelier was opened to EDN members and others. 

EDN Atelier: Moving Ground

The theme of sustainability from the perspective of artistic practice

The EDN Atelier was held in Athens on June 1-2, 2022, co-organised and hosted by Duncan Dance Research Center. Atelier was open to EDN members and others.

EDN Atelier: Breaking the Habits: Rebuilding Sustainability

The theme of sustainability from an institutional production perspective

The EDN Atelier was held in Sofia on May 10-11, 2022, and it coincided with Bulgarian Dance Platform, followed by Antistatic- international contemporary dance festival (Sofia) and One Dance Week Festival (Plovdiv). The atelier was opened to EDN members and others.

Mobility of Artists, Mobility of Ideas

In the frame of the dance festival “Dancing About”, TANZPAKT Dresden, HELLERAU and Villa Wigman hosted an EDN Atelier

The Atelier joined around 25 dance artists, performers, curators, programmers and professionals.

Creation of Dance Work

Producing in different contexts, economies and conditions

With the arrival of the new venue of 700/220 seats in Helsinki, the team at Tanssin Talo hosted a dialogue with European and international colleagues to unpack the diverse potentials and issues concerning creating and presenting dance in different contexts, economies and conditions.

Meeting Grounds

A gathering about contemporary performing arts, thinking in/out Africa

Atelier organized in close co-operation between EDN, Mercat de les Flors casa de la dansa and Graner creation center for dance and live arts, in the context of Grec festival of Barcelona.

The Amplifiers of Voices

The voice in conteporary dance

EDN in collaboration with Kino Šiška organized the EDN Atelier on 20th and 21st November, linked to the November online edition of the International Festival of Contemporary Dance - CoFestival, organized by Kino Šiška and Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia.

HOLDING_TOGETHER

EDN Atelier

EDN joins efforts with Grand Re Union: how can we re-design our thinking and our projects, how can we - still stay creative and how can we co-imagine a new, better, future for our local and global communities and societies.

Online Atelier

How to communicate (about) your work online

An atelier organized by EDN-member Dansmakers Amsterdam, concerning the current possibilities in digital communication of and about artistic practices. The atelier connected makers in dance and other disciplines to digital professionals working with social media, digital archive and online monetisation in order to share tools and knowledge in times of need.

Creating proximity

A possibility of change

The Atelier organised by KLAP Maison pour la danse in Marseille on January 10-11, 2020 dived into the question of audience engagement from the perspective of local neighbourhoods and social bonds.

Dance for young audiences

For whom? Why? How to address the target group?

Those are some of the questions addressed during the Atelier hold at K3 - Zentrum für Choreographie.

Organised as part of the first edition of “Explore dance – Festival for young audiences” it gave to the participants the opportunity to watch up to seven new dance pieces for young audiences and encounter the artists, to exchange with other colleagues on short best practice presentations from different parts of Europe.

The action of Zooming in

On the importance to keep the relevant scale in the things we do

An Atelier investigating relations between ‘Dance and Craft’ organised by The Isadora & Raymond Duncan Dance Research Center, Athens.

The Atelier invited artists from the performance arts, pedagogues and cultural workers to explore, observe and experience a range of materials, techniques and methods of craft and to share and reflect on the insights that crafts can initiate through a series of workshops and lectures/performances.

Freedom of Expression and Mobility

Art practice in times of uncertainty

Yasen Vasilev shares his thoughts on the EDN Atelier on Mobility and Freedom of Expression held in January 2019 at Trafo, Budapest.

Gaining New Perspectives

Practices for body and mind

In this atelier organised by Dansateliers (the Netherlands) participants explored strategies for dance professionals and dance institutes to remain vital and constructively critical with regards to their own practice through lectures, working sessions, dialogue, movement classes and performances.

How can we take in different perspectives on what we do, in order to remain responsive to, or pro-actively act on the ever changing world we live and work in?

Enhancing citizens’ engagement

Dance is a human right

Taking a global perspective on civic engagement through dance, this Atelier held at CSC Bassano del Grappa provided food for thoughts and actions to shift the way we engage with audiences. Topics addressed were related to the development of long term relationships and trust, with citizens, towards contemporary dance initiatives and proposals of the dancehouses.

New approaches to dance training

Dance Training: Is there a ‘right’ model?

Organised by Dance Ireland, this Atelier explored new approaches to training within the complex ecosystem of youth dance initiatives, vocational training and post graduate performance companies.

Authenticity of expression in the local context

The Post-Soviet Body

The aim of this Atelier organised by Tanec Praha was to encourage a deeper knowledge of very diverse contemporary dance scenes in Central Europe and closed post-soviet countries, the similarities and differences between them and their potential for international collaboration

Artists and Structures

How do we transform ourselves?

Taking place over two days, the event organised by EDN, Mercat de les Flors and Graner probed the relationship between dance artists and the institutions that support them. Participants were a mixture of artists, arts administrators, curators and directors from Spain and beyond.

DRAFF, living archive of performance making, reports on the Atelier.

Common Ground: to care

Investigating dynamics of the long-term relationship between artists and audiences

The Atelier organised by Dance House Lemesos focused on how to strengthen professional practice, a clue aspect of the EDN events for the upcoming years. "Audience development is a mindset, not a product or project”, one of the ideas that arose from the meeting.

Akamas

Nature Embodied in Cyprus

The natural environment –as a vital space for survival, for man’s spiritual development and creation– is an inextricable part of culture. As part of the programme of Paphos 2017 European Capital of Culture, Dance Gate Lefkosia organised a workshop and an atelier to research ecological art methodologies as they pertain to a particular contested site located on the Akamas Peninsula.

Working together transnationally

Structures, Conditions and Artistic Practices

The Atelier organised by K3 Hamburg discussed and practiced different models of solidarity within and between production structures and artists, investigated possible media of collaboration and explored choreographic forms of collaboration.

ExChanging perspectives

How can we alter the norms that limit the dance field today?

The Atelier held by Dansens Hus Stockholm took the form of an international conference aimed to shake up, change perspectives, make visible, challenge and examine norms concerning body, disabilities and choreography within education and the dance field.

Dance & Utopia

Imagining and Practising Possible Futures

In this Atelier organised by STUK, we examied how artists and more in particular choreographers, relate to the theme of Utopia today. What strategies do they employ in depicting a possible future together? Can embodied practices play a role in achieving that picture? And how can elements of participation and co-creation be used to further engage the public in this process?

Applying choreographic tools

Applying Tools in organizational chart

As manager, do you know the tools and procedures choreographers in your house use to create? If yes, do you use some of the choreographic tools in the way you run your organization? If not, do you consider choreographic knowledge as valuable for the context of running a project?

This Atelier at Kino Šiška was conceived and facilitated by the Artistic Board of CoFestival and the Nomad Dance Academy.

The missing link

New models of artistic work

During the festival “Projeto Brasil”, HELLERAU hosted an Atelier which focused on new models of artistic work in the frame of community work an today’s shared economy values. Presentations and discussions from Germany, Chile, Colombia and Brazil presented different models of transnational co-productions and networks.

Archives to come

Investigation of diverse practices and strategies to archive

The Atelier organised by Tanzquartier Wien fed the artistic research related to Archiving. As part of the research series SCORES, the Atelier aimed to investigate the diverse practices and strategies of potential and constantly actualized archiving, the archives of the future, continuously arriving, the archives to come. It searched to distinguish tendencies, possibilities and means offered by contemporary choreographic practice in comparison to and in alliance with other disciplines. 

The relevance of dance

What can dance do for our society?

This Atelier took place in March 2016 organized by Dansmakers Amsterdam. It explored how we can make dance more relevant in our society and what dance can do for our society in return, focusing in particular on new audiences, participation and education. The participants were invited to share their thoughts on dance and discuss its accessibility and openness in the light of participation, commitment, interaction and education.

The lonely dance of leadership

Explore ways dance organisations might lead

Leaders have ultimate responsibility for everything. They set the vision and direction of travel, inspire and nurture others, and make decisions that cannot always be popular. Other people may offer advice and opinions, but in the end it is up to the leader to juggle different demands, make sense of diverse views and shape the future. Leadership is a lonely dance.

Dissemination and Creation

Best practices of international cooperation

The Atelier took place at Cable Factory in Helsinki in February 2016. Organized by Dance House Helsinki, it focused on the sharing of best practices of international co-operation from the viewpoint of creation and dissemination. The main question was: what are the current and future strategies and models of co-production to best support artistic creation and its international dissemination and touring?

Who am I?

An exploration of how artistic identity is maintained in a nomadic life

During two days, the Atelier hosted by Dance Ireland focused on the professional dance practitioner informing by questions around identity, mobility and migration. The aim was to explore, from different perspectives, how the identity of the artists is constructed and maintained in a climate where mobility is necessary for the creative process and the professional practice.

Building a dancehouse

Development of houses for dance and structures in Europe

Many dancehouses in Europe have been created over preexisting buildings: convents, factories, industrial sites, brick houses, distilleries, to name some examples. This Atelier at CSC Bassano del Grappa took place in a series of meetings aimed at considering and tracing the European, as well as the international, dancehouses history.

Communication Strategies

An activity dedicated to communication managers

In the Atelier that took place at O Espaço do Tempo, participants developed writing and editing skills, found help to organize research and got an update to the latest development in social and multimedia. One of the participants offers a personal approach to the “Communication Strategies” Atelier.

History of dancehouses in Europe

On the development of European dancehouses

With this Atelier at Tanzhaus NRW, EDN aimed to gather knowledge about the relatively young history of the development of European dancehouses since the 1970’s. During the meeting EDN members set up a working group and defined research topics around the history, buildings and projects of dancehouses.

Training the trainers

How to use video archives as a tool for mediation

Maison de la Danse proposed a two-day-workshop to share with the EDN’s members its video policy and activities in this context. Contents of the atelier focused on 2 topics: Preservation and dissemination of dance archives, and video as a tool for mediation.

EDN Future strategies

A methodology for action

During the first EDN Atelier “EDN Future Strategies” held at Mercat de les Flors, we worked together to reflect on how the network should continue acting in the short term on our two major criteria: relevance and sustainability for dance art.