Diversity in European Higher Dance Education

This two-year Erasmus+ funded project, Diversity in European Higher Dance Education, aims to develop strategies for more inclusive higher education in dance. By collaborating with dance institutions across Europe, the project seeks to explore and enhance approaches to diversity within dance education programmes.

About thirty people sitting in a row on a stage floor — Bodily practice with Marit Shirin. Weaving as a practice of care, La Manufacture, 2024. Photo: Gabriel Schenker

Aims and objectives

The project aims to jointly identify and further develop the strategies and practices of the programmes involved for a more inclusive dance education. We will write a report and develop two courses about diversity and dance:

Report: Practicing Diversity in Dance – a report on three Dance Higher Education Institutions
Course: Dance and Diversity
Course for teachers and staff in higher dance education: Practicing Diversity in Educational Contexts

Our objective is to foster the practice of diversity in dance Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). While these and many other higher education dance programs in Europe could be said to be very diverse regarding its student body, this diversity comes with a varied set of difficulties for the students. Coming from the global south, being a person of colour, being a woman, having precarious financial means, or not sharing the aesthetic paradigm of Europe, are all variables that tend to lead to a variety of difficulties in properly integrating the higher education programs proposed.

In researching three European dance HEIs – their staff, teachers, student body, and alumni, as well as the diversity policies already in place – will help map the diversity/inclusion paradoxes encountered in each institution, learn from the different strategies already in place to tackle such difficulties, and propose best practices that have shown to help to foster diversity practice in each institution's daily life.

Background

In the past few years, led by global movements such as #metoo and Black Lives Matter, the questions of eurocentrism, sexism, racism, and other forms of discrimination have come to the fore in Western societies at large. In different contemporary dance worlds, these movements have led to a variety of initiatives, organizations, and legal proceedings. The questions of inclusion and discriminations have touched not only the professional world but also dance schools, which saw the emergence of a variety of student led initiatives. European contemporary dance and its educational programs, tend to present the knowledge created within it as internationally valid or even universal, bringing up a clash with non-dominant forms of contemporaneity.

While the questions of discrimination, sexism, and racism are global, there are many ways in which such questions find particular expression in the dance world and in dance education:

• dancers work with their bodies with proximity and intimacy,

• artistic creations are often busy with pushing dancers beyond their known aesthetic and physical limits,

• the relations between employers (choreographers) and employees (dancers) are often multiple – including relations of friendship, of love and hierarchical relations are often reversed from project to project,

• dancers often work across cultures,

• the division between self and worker is complex.

These are some of the reasons diversity-related questions have touched the dance field in particular ways.

This research departs from the observation that different dance schools practice diversity in a variety of ways. The location of each institution, the prevailing dance culture, the working language, the teaching body, and the curriculum are all variables that influence the creation of institutionally specific ways of practising diversity and they all engender different degrees and forms of inclusiveness and exclusion towards the student body.

Starting from understanding precisely how such variables articulate to produce specific forms of diversity and exclusion in each institution, the questions Diversity in European Higher Dance Education is asking:

• What kinds of diversity practices are already in place in these institutions?

• How do different dance institutions recognize and deal with issues of exclusion or discrimination when they arise in the student body?

• How do the students see and articulate their own experiences of exclusion or discrimination when crossing one of these educational programs?

Tackling those issues in a transnational and dance-specific environment is crucial to avoid blind spots and produce outputs that are specific to the particular art form.

Partners

Coordinator: P.A.R.T.S. – Performing Arts Research and Training Studios (BEL)

Partners:

La Manufacture (CHE)

Gabriel Schenker - DDE Project coordinator, dancer, teacher and academic head of the Bachelor in Contemporary Dance
Elodie Brunner - collaborator of the research department and administrator
Fabián Barba - artist and teacher
Catol Teixeira de Oliveira - artist and alumni
Bastien Hippocrate - artist and alumni

P.A.R.T.S. (BEL)

Steven De Belder – DDE Administrative coordinator, coordinator of Bachelor and Master
Charlotte Vandevyver - deputy director
Justien Vervaeck – financial administrator, DDE treasurer
Michael Pomero - artist and teacher
Moya Michael - artist and teacher
Renan Martins – artist and alumni
Selby Jenkins – artist and alumni

Stockholm University of the Arts (SWE)

Zoë Poluch - head of dance Bachelor
Chrysa Parkinson - head of subject Dance
Jorun Kugelberg - international projects coordinator
Marit Shirin Carolasdotter – artist and alumni

University of Utrecht / University of Amsterdam (NTL)

Rolando Vázquez - sociologist, decolonial thinker
Rosalba Icaza - sociologist, intersectional feminist thinker

Follow the project!

Follow the project and its research as it progresses here

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