EMBODYING RECONCILIATION
Embodying Reconciliation is a team of artists and humanists dedicated to bodily research as a path to develop an integrated and comprehensive ethic of personal care, forgiveness, and respect for others and the world around us. Our mission is to design, implement, and promote educational, cultural, and therapeutic strategies. These are used to create and support processes of personal healing, collective resilience, and memory building, as well as strengthen cultural and natural heritage. Embodying Reconciliation proposes sustainable alternatives for living peacefully together, respecting differences, and reimagining the bonds that unite society
DANCE TO DEATH
This curatorial project in progress is an invitation to get seduced by the complex and fascinating act of lament created through dance in different cultures and safeguard dance and dance rituals associated with mourning. The idea is to broadcast an event presenting a select range of mourning rituals from different regions of the country and also some others from around the world, at the National Museum of Bogotá (Colombia). The aim is to provoke shocking yet cathartic experiences by bringing death rituals into frank and open talks, and a collective space where it is not common to see death dancing around. When rituals and other celebrations are taking out of context, tend to create distortions about their function and significance. The exhibition wants to provide a collective and massive healing process that raises questions of all kind for further analysis and mutual discussion. Conversely, it is about bringing awareness and self-reflexivity about the circumstances where these human expressions are taking place. How much are we prepared to talk about death? Who are those mostly dying every day? What are the reasons? What are the rituals transmitting us about these deaths?
PURA (OR THE PERVERSITY OF PURITY)
In an attempt to decipher the hidden violence assumed as "normal" in society and family, the dancer and choreographer, Nathalie Elghoul, investigates the role of women in a relentless community, who has become a “Barbie” or an inflatable doll: beings completely devoid of impetus and that have expiration date. Using the referents of this particular period of time and exposing them, a new form of self-stoning is revealed, like plastic surgeries and other mind and body painful subjections, a pattern that is curiously found in the Latin American female society. These exposures emerge as the new “pills of happiness” in a civilization that attempts to achieve a worldwide established beauty through the consumption of her own flesh. PURA, or pure, is an image that refers to the perversity of purity; the questionable idea of "whiteness". PURA intends to reveal, compare and deconstruct mechanisms that are built and established as patterns in the life of women in Latin America, investigating the relationship between the fragility of desire and the violence of obligation, under the accusatory gaze of a society that imposes its rites and traditions which blurs individuality and right to decision.
RAMALLAH BALLET CENTER
Was established in May 2011 in Ramallah, Palestine. It is the dance school in Palestine, with goal is to provide kids and people of different ages a professional place to dance, act and think in a caring and loving atmosphere. Growing up in an environment full of violence and war affects the child in different ways, and many children in Palestine suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Through dance children can develop their imaginations and find the courage to think in creative ways to cope with, and ultimately overcome, the troubles and obstacles they face each day. In this safe space children and grown-ups alike are being provided an opportunity to devote their energy for creative development, instead of violence and suppression they witness every day. By working together with professional teachers and dancers from around the world, students are exposed to varying cultural landscapes and art forms. The performing arts in the Middle East are not strongly supported, and through an education of multiculturalism and creative thinking, Ramallah Ballet Center is aiming to create young cultural leaders in Palestine.
Objectives of Ramallah Ballet Center are: Expose Palestinians to arts, specifically those of dance and movement; Provide Palestinian children a safe space to think and express themselves freely and creatively through dance, crafts and acting; Offer more dance courses to young adults and grown-ups; Raise awareness about ballet and build respect towards the art of dance; Develop the centre into a more professional dance school.
Objectives of Ramallah Ballet Center are: Expose Palestinians to arts, specifically those of dance and movement; Provide Palestinian children a safe space to think and express themselves freely and creatively through dance, crafts and acting; Offer more dance courses to young adults and grown-ups; Raise awareness about ballet and build respect towards the art of dance; Develop the centre into a more professional dance school.
NIGERIA’S INTANGIBLE CULTURAL HERITAGE
This NGO in development is set aside to work with the communities associated with all of Nigeria’s nomination or inscription on the 2003 UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention. The project will be divided into two parts: A critical view, assessment, amendment of pending files and future nominations that will ensure that minority regions are also well represented politically and; To ensure that practices already inscribed continue to be practiced in their usual contexts and not just abandoned only to be called upon when a periodic report is due. The inscription should be a bottom-up approach to ensure that the culture bearers have a feel of safeguarding what they truly refer to as intangible.
VIRTUAL DANCE MUSEUM
Virtual Dance Museums is an international new research and experiment project dedicated to the promotion of dance as a living mirror and a shaping part of human culture, as well as an intangible heritage that provides an aesthetic, cultural and economic value for its bearers. By bringing together digital technology, dance, and heritage, the project aims to explore new ways of presenting and thinking about dance museum, heritage, and audience interaction. The project was initially provoked by a scene from the 2012 American 3D dance film known as Step Up Revolution directed by Scott Speer. Although the association of the museum and dance are not a completely new ideas and practices these days, the ways in which the dancers and the dance is presented in this film raises a number of questions related to dance, the museum, heritage and the nature of audience interaction. For instance, does dance (as one of the performing arts) has to be transformed into the visual arts in order to be displayed in a museum? Does dance belong to a museum like any other cultural heritage? If so, should a dance museum contain tangible objects when it is often considered as an intangible heritage? The aim of the project is thus to examine these questions and thereby define and experiment new methods of presenting the contents of a dance museum and engaging visitors and their experience.
RED SEMILLAS DEL PATRIMONIO
Semillas de Patrimonio Colombia Project of Fundación Biodiversa Colombia, is a national network that supports collective and personal reparation processes through collaboration between different groups working with Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICP) in Colombia. Through local workshops, intercultural meetings and national festivals, we want to make visible, exchange and strengthen the practices and knowledge of the participants, giving a prominent role to children and young people, and seeking to generate capacities within the groups for the implementation of an artistic, cultural and audio-visual production point of view, in a sustainable and continuous way in each territory.
THE MUSEUMS DANCE - THREE INTERACTIVE STORIES ABOUT DANCE
This project focuses on interactive dance dissemination in a cultural historical perspective and safeguarding dance as intangible cultural heritage in a museum envirnment. The Norwegian Center for Folk Music and Folk Dance (SFF) in collaboration with the MiST Museums in Sør-Trøndelag at Ringve Music Museum, Sverresborg Trøndelag Folkemuseum and Rockheim - The National Museum of Popular Music, developed three innovative interactive dance exhibitions. The project is in line with the UNESCO Convention of 2003 on Visibility and Dialogue on Living Traditions (the Intangible Cultural Heritage). The first performance was presented in the spring of 2016, at the Ringve Music Museum, aimed to test the audience's reactions to this kind of interactivity at a museum. The next exhibition, "Dancelagers in Norway in the last 150 years", was set up in the beginning of 2017. The final exhibition at the end of 2017 was a multimedia exhibition on the transfer of dance knowledge, working with Motion Detection (Motion Capture) and Virtual Reality Eyewear.
MoAM – MOVING AROUND MUSIC, THE INTERGENERATIONAL PERCUSSIVE DANCE PROJECT
MoAM is a cultural initiative of music and dance all coming through the human body. The dual concept ofpractically moving to music, but also displacing music around urban space, makes this initiative a very unique cultural experience. The main focus is to involve percussive dancers (mainly from the areas of Body Percussion, Tap Dance, Flamenco, African Dance, Hip Hop, and Bharatanatyam) to disseminate their dances to minorities who do not have access to expensive instruments or formal music classes; but do have their bodies they can play music with! Through rhythm games, history of culturally specific heritages, and workshop-based learning, MoAM aims at engaging two vulnerable communities of our times: unaccompanied minors and the elderly. Four percussive dance artists work through workshops with people from each group, while at the same time introduce each generation to the other through a series of interactive workshops. The involvement of the local communities is multidimensional, since it weaves together intergenerational, multicultural, and cross-discipline populations through the means of the musically moving body and the urban.
BÍBORKA DANCE ENSEMBLE & BÍBOR DANCE STUDIO
Through our activities we are focusing on the development and spread of the art of dance: safeguarding dance as intangible cultural heritage, arousing interest towards traditional dance, breaking down stereotypes towards this genre, public awareness of the many embodiments and intense expressive power of traditional dance. We believe that it is adequate to represent values and feelings or even complex images. Our association is organizing folklore dance courses on ages (Romanian dances and dances of minorities from Transylvania). We have 4 dance classes from ages 4 to 50. A few years ago we began to make contemporary performances too, having as basis of creation choreographic folklore. We presented these performances in in many European countries. In 2018 we founded the Bíbor Chamber Dance Company with the purpose of creating experimental dance performances The aim of these performances is to uplift the creation of contemporary-traditional performances and trigger the perception of the public towards the many faces of traditional dances. Consisting of 10 traditional dancers, the Company is building its own Studio Theater Place in Reghin, Romania, which is to be completed in December 2018. This place will serve not only as a performance space but also for organizing song and dance collection events. This will be possible through the professional audio and video recording equipment.
FELFALU 700
In 1319 the village of Felfalu was mentioned in a written form for the first time. Our association plans to celebrate the 700 year of proven, continuous existence of our village with a set of programs in the whole year. A collection of traditional songs from Felfalu will be published in 2019, scores, texts and audio materials as well. A video documentary series will be published online presenting the cultural heritage of the village.
DANCE AND SHOUTINGS GATHERING
The dance event was created Trunk, Romania, in 2013 in order to promote the traditional dances of the Moldovian Csángó minority firstly within the community, but also to people from outside the community such as people from Transylvania, Hungary. It is a one day long, yearly event that brings together the people who love dancing. The aim of the event is to have people belonging to different generations share their knowledge about Moldovian Csángó dances, and dance songs, chantings and shoutings, but also playing dance music on traditional instruments. All these are taught and learnt from each other during the workshops that are given throughout the day. During the event dance groups can perform, and the event ends in a big dance house, where everyone can participate. Every year more and more people show interest in participating, showing that the interest towards dancing is growing, and that our dances bring people together.