Choreographic Convention #1 – NORSE

The first Choreographic Convention is taking place from April 8 – 10 in Ljubljana, hosted and organised by the network partner NDA Slovenia in collaboration with Centre for Urban Culture Kino Šiška:

Network of Residencies in

South-East Europe #NORSE

Nomad Dance Academy and Kino Šiška with the support of the City of Ljubljana and numerous local and international partners invites key art professionals and city representatives to join us for a three-day conference on an international network of residencies in the field of contemporary performing arts, with special focus on contemporary dance.

Purpose of the conference is to build a network of residencies in South-East Europe as a model of institutionalized and decentralized center for contemporary dance.

We live in times, when individual mobility of artists became European imperative. And when South-East Europe is more often than not exception to the rule in that regard. Due to lack of systemic financing and infrastructural undernourishment, contemporary performative artists find it harder and harder to maintain high professional level of their work.    

How can we think about residencies in such local and international context? In which way can we conceive long term support and exchange of knowledge, experience and programs in South-east Europe? Can we think of mobility outside of the scope of precarious work? How can residencies answer to the needs of local artists and local communities? How can we invent new modes of common management of residential programs between art institutions and non-governmental organizations on both local and international level?  

Mapping the beginnings

On the European level, mobility on the field of contemporary performative arts remains one of the key financial and political elements of building a cohesion within the EU. On the other hand, financial crisis and rise up hateful ideologies severely damaged the ability of artists to move freely around Europe. In the search of redefinition of mobility, artists, producers and institutions intensely question possibilities of different formats of international networking.

In contemporary dance we have numerous support network, that are trying to organize their work around international exchange and connections. However, the quality of international partnerships decreases. With bigger absence of support for local production, tensions between local and international level of creation only increase, and yet remain mostly unanswered. 

Mapping the goals

Based on these facts, we wish to create conditions to organize long term, mutual, inclusive and coordinated process of exchange of knowledge and resources.

In the months prior to the conference we encouraged communication between city officials, NGOs and public art institutions in the South-East Europe. Now it is time to combine already existing residential resources and map common interests, advantages and challenges on local levels with the goal to move toward creation of internationally connected network of residential spaces in the region, which would be a subject of systematic financial support by the cities and ensured the mobility of regional artists.   

On the local that means further support of existing and creation of new rehearsal and residential spaces in the cities and their networking with similar spaces in each country. On the international level we will look forward to create common coordination and management of network of these spaces. 

By creating network of residencies, we wish to improve conditions for work of the local artists and further their mobility, and mobility of the art program within the region, while creating practical conditions for fostering dance work on the level of infrastructure, finances and policy making. We are striving for carefully planned, strategic and sustainable forms of networking.

Mapping the coordinates

We invited decision makers and art professionals from following cities:

Athens, Belgrade, Budapest, Ljubljana, Novi Sad, Podgorica, Prishtina, Rijeka, Sarajevo, Skopje, Sofia, Timisoara, Tirana and Zagreb.

These are potential coordinates of the new network, that will be open to many different forms and variations of cooperation and mobility.

CHECK THE DETAILED REPORT ON THIS CHOREOGRAPHIC CONVENTION IN THE UPPER RIGHT COLUMN.