Second edition of the Forum on Performing Arts for Young Audiences. Graphic design courtesy of the Children’s Art Center in Poznań
This autumn, Poznań will host the second edition of the Forum on Performing Arts for Young Audiences. The main theme of this year’s event is contemporary dance and choreography. The program of the Forum will be comprised of two parts: discursive and performative. The Forum will take place between September 30 and October 3, 2023. It is organized by the Children’s Art Center in Poznań.
About the event:
Contemporary dance and choreography for children and young people are in a state of rapid development, both in Poland and around the world. At the Children’s Art Center, this trend has been observed with great curiosity and appreciation of the potential of these arts to create valuable encounters with young viewers and broaden reflection on performing arts for children. That is why the second edition of the Forum on Performing Arts for Young Audiences will be devoted to this very topic.
The main goal of this year’s Forum is to create a space for the meeting of primarily Polish but also international circles of people working in the field of dance and choreography for young audiences. The Polish collective Holobiont, which for years has been developing and promoting Polish dance and choreography for families, has been invited to co-create the discursive part of the event.
The organizers wish to create an event that supports the exchange and joint creation of knowledge, experiences, views and visions. Their intention is to give impetus to the further development of this area in Poland. They also hope that the event will serve to popularize choreography and the art of dance in the wider community of people professionally involved in theater and performing arts for children. The organizers believe that the Forum will be an opportunity to strengthen the existing relations in the Polish and international community while also fostering new ones.
The first two days of the event will comprise the performative part of the Forum, which will showcase a selection of Polish dance performances addressed to young audiences. This experience will be the basis for the second, two-day discursive part.
During workshops, panels, performative lectures and networking sessions, participants will look at, among other things:
- the specificity of the fields of dance and choreography,
- the role of object and scenography in dance and choreography,
- the possibilities opened up by somatic practices,
- the political aspects of dance and choreography,
- dance criticism,
- cooperation with educational institutions in the field of dance and choreography for families and children.
The forum is meant to be a space for multidirectional inspiration and exchange of experiences. The event is addressed to people who:
- feel attached to contemporary dance, choreography for young audiences,
- feel attached to contemporary theater and performing arts for young audiences,
- implement interdisciplinary projects in which dance and choreography play an important role,
- want to be involved in the development of the environment related to contemporary dance and choreography for children and young people,
- discover dance and choreography for themselves as an area of professional interest,
- are looking for inspiration for creative activities.
The organizers promote the ideas of collective and dynamic knowledge production. They are interested in diagnoses and facts about the current situation, as well as in areas that elude cognition and thus motivate our creativity and research engagement. Therefore, the Forum will be preceded by a survey on dance and choreography for young audiences. The survey, conducted in circles interested in these areas, will be an invitation to pose questions about contemporary dance and choreography for young audiences. The organizers intend the questions as an expression of curiosity and engagement – as such, they will be treated as a preliminary diagnosis of where these fields of art for children and young people currently stand. Any willing person will be able to speak.
Detailed Forum program and terms of participation will appear in June 2023 on the following websites: csdpoznan.pl and nowesztuki.pl
Event date: September 30 – October 3, 2023
Venue: Scena Wspólna, Poznań
Organizer: Children’s Art Center in Poznań
Curators: Hanna Bylka-Kanecka (Holobiont collective), Ewelina Chatłas (Children’s Art Center in Poznań), Joanna Żygowska (Children`s Art Center in Poznań)
Children’s Art Center social media pages: Facebook: Centrum Sztuki Dziecka w Poznaniu, Nowe Sztuki dla Dzieci i Młodzieży
Instagram: Centrum Sztuki Dziecka
The Forum is another activity of the Center aimed at supporting and inspiring professionals involved in performing arts for children and young people and building an environment around this issue. The organizers encourage all interested parties to learn more about the issues and program of the previous edition of the Forum, as well as the community report on audience and text issues in theater for children and young audiences.
The Forum on Contemporary Dance and Choreography for Young Audiences was co-financed under the government program Dance (The National Institute of Music and Dance) from the funds of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage (from the Culture Promotion Fund).
