The 5 co-organising partners from Slovenia, Austria, Croatia and Hungary of Dance Explorations Beyond Front@ a project taking place between 2008 to 2010 are now joined by a sixth co-organiser, from the United Kingdom as well as 6 associated “bridge” partners from: Austria, Greece, Serbia, Slovakia, Portugal, and Italy. These organisations are collaborating in the 2-year project entitled: Beyond Front@: Bridging New Territories.
The previous project resulted in the desire to further develop the collaboration with new activities and extend these to include new partners and expand into new experiences. These aim to not only sustain the effort and success of the earlier project, but also to enhance it and firmly root the project model within the greater European space.
Support for the creative processes and the mobility of artists and their works is one of our main goals. These however cannot be achieved by supporting the activities alone. “To whom it may concern?” is the most important question of our project raised through the title of the co-production created in Creation Beyond Front@ 3. In this young artist’s choreography the important question was raised about who was being affected by her work. Why did it matter? What were the results? Not only in terms of financial success, fame or recognition but also in terms of the level of communication achieved with the audience and through the desire to reach a wide range of audiences.
The project’s partners seek to overcome the barriers that keep dance arts marginalised in these geographic areas by addressing needs for co-productions and networking, by mobilising dancers, dance works and audiences, and by providing opportunities for people to meet and develop a shared language about their contemporary dance experiences beyond their respective spoken languages and national cultures.
The 2-year project, Beyond Front@: Bridging New Territories, will employ dance-related activities to build physical, social and creative bridges between:
1. dance artists in big and small cities;
2. new “Bridge Partners” in other parts of Europe in order to open the Beyond Front@ network to new ideas and talent;
3. dance and other related artistic mediums - video, photography, visual arts, writing, architecture, design - in order to: connect artists; enhance the language of dance; foster artistic creations and develop dance sensibility; expose dance to diverse audiences and presenting contexts;
4. audiences in different countries, improving access to dance arts, engaging them in dialogues around their respective understanding and perception of dance;
5. different social groups, through these experiences around dance, will better understand each other and accept their differences.
The co-organising partners in Slovenia, Austria, Croatia, Hungary, the United Kingdom and their associate “bridge” partners in Greece, Serbia, Slovakia, Italy and Portugal believe that, as primarily a non verbal art form, dance has a unique capacity to unite artists and people across Europe. United by a shared belief in the power of dance the partnership will produce a dynamic programme of co-productions and networking opportunities, mobilising dancers and audiences, across Europe which will result in:
• 20 audience mobility actions
• 5 Dance Communication Labs (DCL)
• 11 DCL Events presenting results of DCLs
• Dialogues Beyond Front@: forums for artists and audiences discussing dance
• 2 international co-productions each presented in 3 to 5 countries
• Dance Media Beyond Front@: exhibitions and screenings (dance in photography, video and film)
• 5 new short (dance) videos
• an online digital archive of dance material
• an enhanced beyondfronta.eu website
• 20 additional presentations of international dance works in 5 countries.