Dance Radar Europe
The promotion of European networks and projects proves to be effective at local, regional and national level, whereas it is more difficult to ensure high visibility at European level. Hence the Dance Radar Europe set out to develop strategies afforded mainly by digital tools as powerful channel for building up a PR platform for the network as an entity and for its activities.
Dance Radar Europe
On the one hand, the measures proposed by the “task force” of four Life Long Burning members (Het Veem/NL), Workshop Foundation/HU, Uferstudios/DE, danceWEB/AT) strongly contributed to the upgrading of the visibility of LLB activities like the Prix Jardin d’Europe and of the audience prize: the invitation of a public TV personality to host the Prix JdE award ceremony from 2014 on raised its profile, with a strong mass media coverage and consequently also with the support of a sponsor (the Casinos Austria); the introduction of an online voting system for the audience prize, renamed in “Fan Award”, equally contributed to reach larger (young) audiences and to gain a sponsor (Radio FM4). On the other hand, the measures proposed for the promotion of the network, whether being virtual tools or based on an advocacy or lobbying approach turned out to be impracticable: the creation of a website common to the LLB network, of a Europe wide dance event calendar or of a European dance magazine either witnessed technical difficulties or failed as they would have required an input by far exceeding the capacity the LLB partners. As for the lobby approach, in the form of the creation of an annual meeting of European dance networks in order to build a European cultural policy pressure group, it proved to be irrelevant as the Life Long Burning network is not a lobbying group with a mandate to dialogue with the European authorities. Nevertheless, a solution to get out of this deadlock came with the success of the “Post Dance Conference” organized as a Performance Situation Room (PSR) by LLB partner Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm in October 2015.
This event, which gathered the main players in Contemporary Dance and Performance in Europe, brought to light the strong need for more discourse in the multi-faced genre of dance. This gave rise to the idea to organize a follow up to the Stockholm conference in the form of a symposium that would achieve good visibility for the LLB network and above all contribute to a Europe of ideas, stepping back from the economic perspective, the nationalist backlash and the pervading neoliberalism.