SuSy internship Teo Vlad at Uferstudios

In the frame of the SuSy activity, Uferstudios welcomes the emerging dance administrator Teo Vlad to get first hand experience in an internationally working dance institution. Teo Vlad is involved in various administrational tasks of Life Long Burning activities implemented by Uferstudios.

The placement of Teo Vlad (legally Teodora Vlad) within our project-activity SuSy covered the time period September 2019 – February 2020. Mr. Vlad was selected out of 82 applicants, responding to the open call of the LLB-SuSy opportunity. Within the application process Mr. Vlad convinced by a great curiosity on how bureaucratic paths within an institution like Uferstudios are run, and how flexibility and experiments can nevertheless still be part of an institutional forming. In addition Mr. Vlad was convincing, because his curriculum showed a broad field of interest and skills within and beyond his artistic career on stage. Having passed from visual communication to performance to dance and having assisted in many artists self-organized initiatives, proofed to be an ideal departure point on adding in-depth knowledge of administrative, financial and organizational tasks within an institution. 

As introduction to Uferstudios Mr. Vlad was assigned to each one of our departments for a week, assisting in the areas of stage technique & building management, rental and production management and billing & finances. Once familiar with the overall running of our house, Mr. Vlad was assigned to specific projects that were planned for the upcoming period. 

Overall Mr. Vlads training was conceived like a self-learning experience, with assistance and supportive controlling by Uferstudios team: in order for him to learn hands on through experience, and to develop a self-organized and self-challenging learning experience, we allowed - within the tasks assigned to him - as much overall responsibility and organizational autonomy as possible, This also meant for the Uferstudios team to set out a clear path on what, when and how the achievement of a specific task/project/process was expected, and assisting and sharing knowledge along the way - once things were unknown or unclear - rather then deliberating each step to be taken in the above mentioned tasks. Thus the assigned projects spanned from conceptual assistance, organizational tasks, communication, co-hosting and documentation of the exchange programme dancehub 2019/2020. It involved him organizing and collaborating on the conception of a new edition of the Performance Situation Room 2020, as well as assigning him communication and preparatory financial and technical reporting with the funding body “Senatsverwaltung Kultur&Europa”. 

Applying this methodology of self-organzed learning within our institutional process was only possible since Mr. Vlad already had a basic understanding of administrative and organizational processes from “organzing” his own career, was very sovereign in overlooking complex project processes and was open-minded and curious enough to actually ask for very concrete help, advise and support. In the outcome though, and judging from the results of the tasks assigned, as well as from Mr. Vlads broadening of understanding the complexity of allowing open formats, within institutaional, administrative and legal framings, this methodology was utterly fruitful. 

Quite progressed in his structural thinking, the placement of Mr. Vlad within Uferstudios can be considered a very horizontal team-like strategy of learning and training. A very effective model of placement seen that it prepares best for the self-organized freelance condition Mr. Vlad has to face after his internship again, and awakens and mirrows best the way of learning, searching help&support all freelance artist have to learn on an administrative level next to their artistic workline. In addition Mr. Vlads inputs also gave rise to a little turboil in our own institutional workflow, challenging certain paths of decision making and introducing new ideas for our communication strategy. 

View the experience report of Teo in the upper right column.