The term “dance education“ (German: Tanzvermittlung — note on the translation) refers to a variety of approaches to dance. In principle, it seeks to enable all people to deepen their experiences with and through dance, to connect these experiences with their own everyday life and to use them for social change. It is a participatory practice that connects dance and its audience. A practice of questioning, deconstructing, and ideally transforming, in which artistic and pedagogical work meet on an equal footing.
In practice, dance education can have many faces. It can inspire people to talk about dance and to explore issues more deeply through dance. It can take the form of a pre- or post-performance (audience) discussion, but it can also include a joint research project on a certain topic that is carried out by means of dance. It includes participatory dance projects with non-professionals as well as any other form of learning with and through movement.
The idea of a “Tanzvermittlungszentrum” grew out of the AG (working group) Vermittlung in the context of the Dance Round Table.
The Dance Round Table was “an exemplary participatory process involving the participation of over 200 stakeholders from the dance scene. In five working groups focusing on specific topics, during a two-day symposium and at four round-table discussions with politicians and administrators, structural deficits were identified and concrete recommendations for action were developed. The result is a Dance Development Plan 2019–2025, drafted with a great deal of expertise, which dovetails short-, medium- and long-term goals with a view to successively “building up” the art form of dance within Berlin’s cultural landscape.”1
Under the supporting structure of Zeitgenössischer Tanz Berlin e.V., a callout was made for a steering group in November 2020, which is tasked with connecting stakeholders and experts in the field and with developing a viable concept for a Berlin “Tanzvermittlungszentrum” through an engaged dialogue.
Out of the individual applications submitted, an initial, three-person conception team was assembled: Elena Basteri (dance curator and dramaturg), Janne Gregor (choreographer and dance educator), and Gabriele Reuter (choreographer, dance educator and urbanist), with a mandate to find an additional team member with a focus on diversity/inclusion. A second public call for applications for the fourth team member was issued in early December 2020. As part of this process, cultural institutions within the performing arts that actively work on issues of diversity and stakeholders working in the field of inclusion and intersectional discrimination research were contacted, and an initial network was established. The impressive response of 35 applications within a short period of 10 days and a series of intensive interviews sent a clear signal to the steering group of the need for addressing diversity issues in dance, raising the question of what role a “Tanzvermittlungszentrum” should play in this process. For many years now, the choreographer, author and activist Nora Amin has been helping to shape the discourse around intersectional forms of discrimination in dance, and joined the steering group as the fourth team member in January 2021. From the pool of applicants, an additional team of experts and stakeholders was assembled to expand the steering group (the choreographers and dance educators Teo S. Vlad, Joy Ritter, Sven Seeger and Angela Alves and the dance researcher and curator Elisa Ricci). The expanded team oversaw efforts to integrate issues related to diversity into the conception phase, assuming and representing different perspectives (the trans*queer community, the urban dance community, intercultural work, inclusion/accessibility). Angela Alves was also commissioned by the steering group to coordinate and structure accessibility measures for internal and external communication.
In this expanded team constellation, the steering group undertook several activities over the course of 2021 that led to the conception of the future “Tanzvermittlungszentrum”. These varied in form and content and covered different parts of Berlin’s dance landscape: from laboratories to generate ideas and topics to focus on to a comprehensive series of interviews with stakeholders in the field of dance education and community engagement (conceived by Elisa Ricci), to conducting a survey (conceived by sociologist Melisa Bel Adasme), as well as several meetings and conversations with dance institutions and professionals from the berlin dance scene. The steering group’s activities were organised around a multi-step conceptualisation process, allowing the group to reflect, connect, develop and build on the results of the previous Dance Round Table.
The “conception phase” section of this website publishes the material produced during this phase and the documentation of the activities it involved.
All the conversations, research, workshops and labs carried out in the conception phase culminated in a concept paper that lays out the next steps for a “pilot phase”.
In this phase, the visions that emerged in the conception phase are to be put directly into practice.
Footnotes
- Hintergrund zum Runden Tisch Tanz (Accessed April 2022)