On August 21st 2022, Soft Skills in dance – A guidebook to enhance your practice – was presented in Bassano del Grappa as part of the dance festival B-motion. This guidebook is the intellectual outcome of a period of intensive research and developing language, tools, audio’s and imagery to organize soft skills – the ones we practice when we dance – in such way that dance professionals can engage with it to enhance their practice.
What skills do we practice when we share a dance experience?
When we connect eyes, offer a hand, or balance together in a moment,
What is happening?
We are practising the skills of togetherness.
We are navigating the delicate balance between our own reality and that of others.
Dancing together brings people into the present moment, creating a shared experience for feeling part of a collective, a community:
What we practice physically becomes our skills mentally.
What we practice mentally shapes how we approach others in our environment.
How we recognize our own strengths, take care of others, deal with uncertainty and complexity and how we negotiate space are just some of the essential human skills, also known as soft skills, that we develop while dancing.
The more we embody these types of soft skills in dance, the stronger those skills can become.
Which soft skills do you foster for people in your dance practice?
Which soft skills do you take from dance into your daily life?
In this digital guidebook we share our findings, tools and examples to help you identify and articulate the knowledge and soft skills within your practice, bringing a new layer to the human and societal experience that dance generates.
Research team: Monica Gilette, Sara Houston, Patricia Carolin Mai, Marcella Santander Corvalán, Elena Sgarbossa, Giovanna Garzotto , Connor Schumacher
Partners: La Briqueterie – CDCN Val de Marne, CSC Bassano del Grappa, K3, Croatian Institute for movement and dance, Fine Arts Academy Zagreb, University of Roehampton, Dansateliers.