Fot. Damir Yusupov.
Identity.Move!is designed to bring together practitioners and theoreticians from 14 countries of the “Eastern Belt” of Europe stretching from the Baltic to the Mediterranean Sea. It is a platform facilitating an exchange of experience among over fifty participating experts and artists, a search for points of convergence, and an attempt to define what contemporary dance is about in the context of the body, the subject and (supra)national identity.
Lublin – where dance meets
The project’s first public outing will begin on March 27 in Lublin and will last for the following weekend. It will consist of panel discussions, workshops and presentations of artists, dancers, performers, choreographers. The seminar is one of the stages of the two-year project, bringing together experts and performance artists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia. A detailed timetable will be published soon.
Body in movement
Identity.Move!offers an new glance on dance, and contemporary culture as a whole. Sociologists and psychologists underscore the significance of the body, not only the mind, in memory processes and identity building. The body can be shaped and disciplined according to socially accepted norms. Yet, at the same time, it will always remain individual. In this sense, the way how performers move on stage is a form of language, and unique communication tool, expressing collective and individual identity. Identity.Move! aims to decipher the “individual handwritings” of Eastern European dance scenes and their narratives of everyday life.
Investigating dance scenes, investigating Europe
At the same time, the project emphasises the role of a region, a network of countries, its specificity and unique character. Identity.Move!transcends borders. It bridges the gap between the soft world of emotions, feelings and interpretations, and the sphere of theory and academic reflection. It offers a key to understanding characteristic features of the Eastern European dance scene, and thus to discovering, through dance, the identity, roots, and unique power and energy of the region.
The project was launched in 2013. The Lublin symposium will be followed by Labs, that is special coaching meetings to be held in Athens, Essen, Poznan and Prague from July to October 2014, and the Bazaar in Prague that is going to be the project’s grand finale in May 2015.
Identity.Move! is coordinated by Goethe-Institut Warsaw in cooperation with the Centre for Culture in Lublin, Eastern European Performing Arts Platform, Motus o.s. / Alfred ve dvoře in Prague and the State School of Dance in Athens.
With the support of the Culture Programme of European Union
For more information on the project, visit its website:www.identitymove.eu
