Labo Prix Jardin d'Europe / Platforma HR

The Labo Prix Jardin d'Europe is a format flexible module, connected to a local event or festival and combining several Life Long Burning activities.

The network partner Tala Dance Center organises the Labo Prix Jardin d'Europe / Platforma HR in Zagreb and presents in total 22 choreographers as selection of Croatian, Balkan and Life Long Burning partner countries.

The different program lines, presented in the frame of this Labo are consisting of the following:

+ platform of Croatian and Balkan artists

+ Dance Works! co-productions

+ Wild Card residencies

+ Nomad Dance Institute - Diffusing Knowledge Meeting

+ annual meeting of the Life Long Burning network with 12 partner institutions

+ SuSy exchange program between the LLB network partners Uferstudios and Tala Dance Center.

The first Labo Prix Jardin d’Europe edition was organised by Tala Dance Center and hosted in the frame of their 15^th PLATFORMA HR from 21. – 29. April, 2014. It took place in several locations in Zagreb: Pogon JEDINSTVO, Dance Centre TALA, Library Ljevak, Močvara Club and the Sava mound. Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO pre-program was Project TASK.

Platform HR / Prix Jardin d'Europe LABO (PRIX JDE LABO) presented an expanded program, including young and renowned dance artists from Croatia, the Balkans region and Europe. During nine dynamic and active days and with the goal to promote dance and its countless possibilities, Tala Dance Center presented recent Croatian and European authors, choreographers, dance experts, and artists from Bulgaria, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Hungary, Slovenia, Serbia, Great Britain, Macedonia, and Sweden.

This year's Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO was dedicated to the citizens and openly invited them to participate under the slogan "SVI MARŠ NA PLES" ("Go Out and Dance"). Tala Dance Center put the accent on the audience and all of the potentials an audience has. Tala Dance Center dealt with the notion of empathy and audience as associated protagonist: the symbiosis of the artistic act of a performance and performer with the audience in the circumstances of nature and public spaces. The significance of an audience in the triad that is the basis of any artistic act (artist, audience, space) was also accentuated through interactivity with the audience, and it was expected from the audience to be active, aware and present. Tala Dance Center had greatest expectations from the last feature (presence) since all the performances were free, therefore more accessible to the local community, as well as to actions and projects into which Tala Dance Center involved citizens, cyclists, public figures, etc. The aim was to motivate empathy and initiate responsibility; the audience and artists together are creating culture of the City of Zagreb. The program was visited by about 3,000 spectators.

Further, Tala Dance Center presented the following LLB and NOMAD co-produced performances and performances proposed by the network partners during their platform: Maud Le Pladec “Professor”, Isabelle Schad “Form and Mass”, Sin Arts Center “ Skin Me“, Florentina Holzinger “SILK“, Dinis Machado “Black Cats Can See In The Dark But Are Not Seen“, Iva Sveshtarova “A(e)ffect”, Willi Prager “Transformability“, Dragana Bulut “Pass It On “, Aleksandar Georgiev, Jovana Rakic Kiselic & Azra Ibrahimovic “Concerto For Three Bodies”, Ivan Mijačević “Awaiting Resonance“.

Streetforma festival as one of the components of the Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO is designed as a platform for street dancers in Zagreb. It is a collective of street dance teachers, artists and freestylers, and it consists of residences, workshops, panels, and the inevitable jams. With this festival, Tala Dance Center had intention to promote dance techniques belonging to hip hop culture, to introduce urban dance scene to the audience, and to motivate young people to show interest in urban dance culture. This year, Tala Dance Center have introduced two foreign choreographers, Kenrick Sandy Loyd from the UK and Aviance Milan from Sweden.

As part of the festival, Kenrick "H20" Sandy held a residency program in Dance Centre TALA premises. As the result of auditions, he chose dancers to create a forty-minutes-long piece, presented within the Platform HR, in the course of seven days (from 20th to 27th April). Kenrick "H20" Sandy is one of the best choreographers on the British urban, commercial and theatre scene: in 2012, he also created a choreography for the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in London. The topic of his residency program was to include street dancers into the process of a theatre piece creation, thus allowing the dancers to incorporate their urban freestyle skills into different concepts of movement and thinking. The work with chosen dancers resulted in an urban "contemporary" theatre piece. The street dancers displayed their complete talent for listening to music and for rhythm, but also their choreographic, performing and freestyle skills.

The second workshop, Vogue Workshop, was led by Aviance Milan in Dance Centre TALA premises for two days (on 26th and 27th April), with a short presentation within the Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO. Vogue was described as posing style, as Vogue as magazine, and as copying poses of models with strict lines of hands and bodies that move in short sequences, freezes. On this workshop, Aviance presented New Way Vogue, Handwork control, floor combinations, and the feeling of dance and performing in general. His style is unique in the sense of precise control of movement in accordance with particular segments of music.

More over, open panel discussions, led by Kenrick "H20" Sandy, Aviance Milan, and Frederick Folkes "The Realness" from London (a representative of poppin`lockin and American club dance styles) was held on 26th April. The panels dealt with the history and development of urban dance styles, development of individual styles, manners in which American urban dance styles are integrated in theatre, discussion about Vogue culture and comparison of the Croatian dance scene with the global one, as well as the importance of education for street dancers oriented to acquire competence in pedagogy.

The response to and interest for this type of workshop was remarkable, and it showed us that the education of young dancers in the field of hip hop culture is necessary and important.

An integral part of the Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO is educational program. Education is acquired through workshops, presentations, and discussions. Dancers and choreographers have opportunity to meet, work, and talk with prominent national and international dance artists and professionals. It is a place for education, dissemination of knowledge and skills, presentation of new initiatives and projects at local, regional, and international levels.

This year, in addition to the above mentioned two workshops within Streetforma festivals , two additional workshops were held as part of the festival Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO. One was titled "Creative Communication," and the other, a workshop about the relationship of music and dance, was entitled "Terpsichorean Sonics".

"Creative Communication" workshop, led by Dejan Srhoj (dancer and choreographer from Slovenia) and Tamara Curić (dancer and choreographer from Croatia), explored communication as the essential element for the creation of innovative working environment. Since the basic form of collaboration in contemporary dance is communication through sight, touch, movements, gesture, and articulation of the experienced, many tools and games that enable and feed communication are developed. The aim of the workshop was to share some of these competencies with intention to give the participants corporeal experience of communication in movement and to provide feedback and contemplation about possible ways to transfer some of these competencies into everyday working environment. Target group were NON-dancers and the ideas was to offer information, knowledge and experience of dance to community in general. This workshop was organised for employees of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia.

"Terpsichorean Sonics" workshop, led by Ivana Mijačević (dancer and musician from Slovenia), dealt with the relationship of music and dance. She offered insight into music from the perspective of a dancer, and offered precise tools for the creation of dance and improvisation with regard to music. The workshop included development of ability to listen to music and was appropriate for both beginners as well as experts in any of the dance genres.

The same as every year, the Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO hosted TASK Project (TASK is an interactive dance journal/project, entailing explorative, performative, educational, documentary and visual/graphical aspect) and TASK Exhibition in the period from 17th April to 29th April 2014. The exhibition sought to connect visual and dance art as the place of meeting and cooperation, promotion and affirmation, dialogue of dance and other art disciplines, as well as revealing their similarities and differences for the purpose of creating new ideas. The exhibition was interested in finding out what and how visual artists are able to take, translate, and assimilate from dance methodologies and poetics into their own creative work. 14 students and alumni of the MA Department of Animation and New Media, Academy of Fine Arts, responded/reacted to one out of five TASK editions, issued in 2014, creating their works in the media of installation, video, sound, performance art, etc.

Tala Dance Center closed the 15th Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO with a celebration of World Dance Day, entitled GO OUT AND DANCE, on Petar Preradović Square on 29th April 2014. An interesting and abundant dance art program was presented from 10am to 7pm, including short performances, interviews with artists, and other programs of art. The Croatian message for World Dance Day was written and presented by the author Edina Pličanić, ballet soloist of the National Theatre in Zagreb, and the international message was read by Haris Pašović, theatre director and director of the East West Centre Sarajevo who visited the central celebration in Zagreb. At 6pm, a large group photograph was taken for the dance postcard "GO OUT AND DANCE" in Zagreb, Rijeka, Rovinj, Zadar, Pag, Koprivnica, Djakovo, Požega, Sv. Nedjelja, Karlovac, Varaždin and other towns, as the symbol of celebrating the 32nd anniversary of this important event. On this day, dancers and all other participants wish to give a powerful contribution to universal dance community worldwide.

Tala Dance Center ended the celebration of World Dance Day and closed the Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO in Pogon JEDINSTVO with the Croatian opening night of "I MUST, I SHOULD, I MAY, I CAN, I WILL and I WANT" by Jasna L. Vinovrški (Public and Private) and with the performance "Black Cats Can See In The Dark But Are Not Seen" by Dinis Machado.

In total, the program of Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO 2014 hosted 36 shows and over 180 artists.

As part of the program TASK, 10 short performances were presented. Tala Dance Center hosted three workshops, one residence within Streetforma, two residences within Wild Card, and SUSY stuff exchange LLB program.

This year's Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO was visited by about 4000 spectators and attended by about 20 accredited journalists.

Life Long Burning and other partners of the Platform HR - selectors, promotors, directors of festivals, and heads of significant global organizations and choreographic centres participated in the meetings held during the Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO. They all form a network of partners within which Tala Dance Center establishes numerous collaborations. The same group of people watched the performances and programs offered by the Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO.

The Platform HR / PRIX JDE LABO has acquired a form in which works of Croatian and foreign choreographers are presented. In many ways, it is an open platform for presentation, exchange, and communication. Croatian choreographers are given the opportunity to present their work at different festivals and dance centres through an exchange of artists, made possible by the network of numerous collaborators and partners of the Platform. In this way, the Platform HR has become a valuable partner to our dance artists because it opens the door to the international scene.

In the course of last fifteen years, Tala Dance Center has collaborated with a number of local choreographers and hosted large number of choreographers from the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, France, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Spain, Israel, Slovenia, Cyprus, Switzerland, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Sweden, the United States of America, and Great Britain.