Festival

Organized by:

Centre of Contemporary Choreography DRUGIE TANCI (OTHER DANCES)

MANIFESTO…

“Least of all Im interested in HOW people move. Im rather interested in WHAT makes them move,” — these words by Pina Baush quoted so often today reflect the philosophy, the outlook and the manifesto of a whole generation of dancers and choreographers of the last third of the XXth century, who pioneered not just a physical, but rather an intellectual revolution in a dance.

Nowadays, being influenced by the streaming information flow, as well ad new impressions and new knowledge, our perception of Ourselves and the Society undergoes cardinal change. Same change refers to our perception of a Dance as an art aimed to embody the Spirit of the Epoch much sharper than the others.

Contemporary Dance with its associative and allegorical philosophy addresses to a spectator who is intelligent and advanced. It is quite often a provocation, an emotional and intellectual shock aimed at widening our consciousness.

Contemporary Dance is a search and an experiment of a Body, Thought and Feelings in Space and Time. It neither entertains, or illustrates. It rather gives birth to thinking and emotional feeling.

For more that half a century now, Free Dance gathers multi-thousand audience in halls the world over. In Ukraine it is just getting out of the underground as an antipode to a mass pop-culture stuffing us up with “artistic” mass consumption goods.

Along with the official ballet stage representing a classical repertoire to a spectator, as well as with the traditionally b and supported by the government folk dance, shoots of new dance self-awareness show themselves in Ukraine more and more each day.

Contemporary Dance has, evidently, come to Dniepropetrovsk seriously and for long. It’s our city that offered residence to the only Ukrainian annual International Festival of Contemporary Dance andPerformance FREE DANCE.

An idea to establish an International Festival of Contemporary Dance and Performance in Ukraine was a result of the initiative of the Centre of Contemporary Choreography DRUGIE TANCI (translated as OTHER DANCES) located in Dnipropetrovsk , and its longtime partners, i. e. the Embassy of France in Ukraine and the French Cultural Centre.

The first joint project which won an immense spectator success was the tour of a famous French company ALAMBIC in autumn of the year 2000.

Today the International Festival FREE DANCE is the first and only festival in Ukraine which gathers at its festival grounds professional theatres of contemporary conceptual dance from many countries of the world. The festival’s concept and genre stylistics are unique for the cultural space of Ukraine.

The Festival’s major subject of interest and research is Free Dance

• Winning over with it’s lack of previous setting, saving a spectator from the suppressure of a scenario, evoking thinking, emotions and creative work;
• building up the capability of independent and open thinking, ability to enter any progressive processes and communities in a civilized way, while preserving one’s own originality and respecting the rights of the neighborhood.

The organizers of the Festival view the mainobjective of all of the Festival’s projects to be instilling such priorities of consciousness in the Ukrainian younger generation, who are the bearers of the present and the future of the national culture.

Festival’s goals:

• Create a precedent of a systematic and targeted obtaining of the information on new forms of contemporary dance theatre by spectators and professionals of Dniepropetrovsk and other regions of Ukraine;
• Enable the creative youth auditorium realize their creative potential within the framework of the festival, fill in the information vacuum in a professional education, therefore, assisting the youth to reach a complete personal and social self realization;
• Combine initiatives arising at the regional, national and international levels lying within the sphere of contemporary creative industries into the process of generating a professional creative product in Ukraine and attracting attention of the international cultural community to the above mentioned process and its results.

In November, 2001 within the framework of the 1 st FREE DANCE Festival, the performances of the “Azani” Company (France) and Drugie “Tanci” School (Ukraine) were presented to public.

The programme of the 2 nd Festival (November, 2002) already included:

• CHRISTINE BASTIN Company (France)
• TWOINONE Company (Austria — Hungary)
• AURA Dance Theatre (Lithuania)
• DRUGIE TANCI Centre (Ukraine)

In November, 2003 more than 5 000 people became the spectators of the 3 rd International FREE DANCE Festival, spectator auditorium geography having stretched far beyond the borders of the Dniepropetrovsk region.

Dance theatres from France, Germany, Czech’s Republic, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova presented their performances on the grounds of the third festival.

List of companies invited to participate in the4 th International Contemporary Dance Festival FREE DANCE:

• FRANCE  — KAFIG Company — RECITAL
• AUSTRIA — SMAFU Company -THE ONES AND THE OTHERS
• NETHERLANDS — D. Elshout & F. Haendler Project- DNO, or THE BOTTOM OF THE HEART
• SWEDEN — RUSSIA  — Benno Vorhaam & Nikolai Shetnev — ADAM&ADAM
• Czech Republic — Petra Hauerova Project -NIGHT MOTH
• Linda Stranska Project — INSIDE EACH OF US 
• POLAND — Lublin Contemporary Dance Theatre — PlePleJAdy
• RUSSIA  — TOP 9 (St-Petersburg) — ACCENTS
• Taras Burnashev & Daria Buzovkina Project (Мoscow) — SNOW
• Soul Dance Theatre (Samara)
• UKRAINE — Contemporary Dance Centre DRUGIE TANCI / OTHER DANCES
• Dance companies from Korea .

Planned Events of the 4 th FREE DANCE Festival:

• educational programme on contemporary dance and improvisation techniques for childredn and young professional dancers, choreographers, actors and producers.

  Professionals from France, the Netherlands, Sweden, the USA and Russia will lead experimental creative laboratories.

• international workshop for journalistswho write about contemporary arts.

International Festival FREE DANCE is a non governmental, non commercial experimental art project in the sphere of contemporary arts, the budget of which is being generated as a result of sponsor funding of legal entities, financial assistance of international cultural programs and institutions, as well as voluntary donations of the public.

The festival gets information support of the regional and national TV and radio companies, newspapers and magazines. The list of the festival’s information partners is constantly growing.