We move on!

Dear audience and colleagues, 

We took our time before sending out the first newsletter in this brand new year 2021. We needed some time to start the year well, as the organisation is transitioning quite some. 

As you may know, from January on, Dansateliers receives not only funding from the municipality of Rotterdam but also financial support from the Performing Arts Funds. The latter support enables us to continue working with associate artists Connor Schumacher, Ingrid Berger Myhre and Marta & Kim. Dance artists, whom you might know well already. Consequently, our team is expanding;  Karina van Bezooijen collaborates closely as a creative producer with Connor,  Annejon Okhuijsen continues working as creative producer for both Ingrid and Marta & Kim and supports ad interim business manager Ruben Cieremans in taking on delegated tasks concerning business management. Merel Heering – with whom we collaborated already project based – will work more structurally with us as an associate dramaturg and will be co-responsible for the further development of how we operate as a house  in all its facets. We will soon introduce them all to you in more detail, including a new – still to be found – team member on communication. 

With these highly skilled and dedicated professionals, of which Carolien Verduijn (PR and Communication) and myself are a part of, we form a strong collaborative team.  We are recalibrating the organisation and how – as a team – we can operate and collaborate sharing the same ground and mission, which we all embrace, feel and incorporate. In order for all of us to share responsibility and make the organisation and its artists move forward and progress in what it can do and mean. And that feels really good! 

Next to this change within the team and the collaboration with our associates, we continue working on the development of new generations of artists, related professionals and knowledge, whilst finding ways to interact warmly with our audience and at the same time reach out for  new audiences. 

What happened in our studios, despite the fact we cannot meet up with all of you….? We hosted Courtney May Robertson, who is currently working on her solo The Woman Destroyed. Joseph Simon revisited his solo Chameleon and is finalizing the film version of it.. Marta & Kim kept on elaborating on their trio work  FASE. We started two new international research projects, CROWD, about working with communities in dance, and Empowering Dance, about learning more about soft skills through dance. 

And when will all of this see daylight and public,  corona volente,  digally or otherwise. The Woman Destroyed and FASE were planned to  premier during Festival Cement, but we have come to know that again this year the festival will be canceled and divide its programmation over a longer period of time.  Chameleon will premiere as part of the  Cinedans Festival programmation in March. The open call for CROWD closes on February 21st after which a selection of six artists will be made. The programme will start in July in Finland and will land in Rotterdam early September. Of course we will keep you informed about all of our other projects in due time. 

January is over, the lockdown is still a severe one and we have been able to enjoy realtime winter for a bit. But, the days are getting longer, spring time is upcoming  and we happily continue working through versatile grounds with all kinds of fun and inspiring collaborations ahead. More about those later. 

We really cannot wait until we see you again, for real, in person, physically present, but we are patient and look for other ways to connect. For example through our movement class, every Monday evening online via zoom. Don’t miss out on those, they will make you dance and smile in your own homes. 

For now stay well and keep on moving, 

Warm wishes on behalf of all of us,  Kristin 

Image: Thijs Huizer