Pivot Dance, a European creative collaboration initiative, was recently announced by The Place, London. It is a three year project looking at the value of creating dance performances in consultation with audiences, artists and producers, funded by the Creative European Programme of the European Union. With such huge backing, the initiative looks set to introduce new work for even more dance audiences.
This project is running simultaneously at The Place in the UK, CSC Centro per la Scena contemporanea di Bassano del Grappa in Italy and Nederlandse Dansdagen in The Netherlands. The three partners aim to represent a cross-section of organisations in Europe, made up of a producing theatre, a national platform and an international festival. The partnership is synchronised in terms of the organisations’ objectives towards dance artists and audiences, going further to embrace wider objectives around deepening artists and audience relationships.
Pivot Dance will culminate in the creation of six brand new dance shows made with the help of an ‘Audience Club’ in each country, hitting each of its objectives in working towards the future of dance. Specifically, Pivot Dance aims to create a shift in behaviour in the dance industry for the next generation of makers and audience, where they go on a creative journey together, rather than meeting at the end in the performance space. The three project partners are international leaders in supporting emerging artists and so are ideally placed to shift artistic behaviour across Europe.
The three key dimensions of Pivot Dance are therefore artists, producers and audiences to develop an artistic voice and entrepreneurial instincts from the very start of the creative process. Over the course of the project, the selected artists and producers will work with the Audiences Clubs and experienced dance professionals. This project tests new models for this three-way relationship: how it can impact the dances that are made, and how audiences connect to them.
The artists and producers who have been selected to participate in Pivot Dance are:
Sivan Rubenstein and Xavier De Sousa (UK) Joseph Toonga and Emma Beverley (UK) Giorgia Nardin and Irene Bedin (Italy) Elena Giannotti and Lisa Gilardino (Italy) Dario Tortorelli and Fred Bax (The Netherlands) Iván Pérez and Joriene Blom (The Netherlands)