Albertine Dance Season | Professional Symposium

How do we sustain a practice of global exchange in dance at a time of climate and funding crisis; a time marked by social inequities and cultural upheavals? What are the privileges and abundances, the tools and creative resources that can be shared and imagined in common? Drawing on a rich tradition of choreographic exchange and collaboration, the symposium will gather dance artists, curators, scholars, and funders working on both sides of the Atlantic to reflect upon and speculate on the models and approaches that can best guide future partnerships and cooperative action.

This two-day event will include roundtables with industry experts and opportunities for one-on-one dialogues with artists on topics including dance residencies, pedagogy as performance, transmission, curatorial ecologies, and more.

The professional symposium, curated by Noémie Solomon with the support of an Advisory Committee and the Villa Albertine team, is free and open to students, culture professionals, and anyone interested in the world of dance and live arts. 

REGISTER to attend in person (Button on the left of your screen)

The two-day symposium will also be livestreamed on HowlRound TV, a project of HowlRound Theatre Commons. 

The Symposium is part of the Albertine Dance Season: A year-long celebration of the art of dance from inception to performance.  Browse the season’s full programming here 

Schedule

Thursday, October 26

9:45am – Welcome  

10am – Introduction

10:30am – Roundtable I – PEDAGOGY AS PERFORMANCE
What can hybrid spaces of learning – where pedagogy meets performance and vice-versa – teach curatorial practices? What are the educational and experimental models that drive the development of “creative campuses” and dance programs on both sides of the Atlantic? 

Panelists:  Raphaëlle Delaunay, Choreographer and dance educator, Program Élan – Centre national de la danse (CN D), Pantin;  Joshua Lubin Levy, Director, Center for the Arts, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT; Noé Soulier, Choreographer and Director, Centre national de Danse Contemporaine (CNDC), Angers; Dr. Julia M. Ritter, Dean, USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance, U. of Southern California.

Moderated by Tara Aisha Willis, Performer, curator, and scholar, Chicago.

Respondent: Ashley Dehoyos Sauder, Curator, Diverseworks, Houston, TX.

11:45am – BREAK

12pm –  Artists Provocation I – Linda Hayford (FAIR-E collective) and Alain “Hurrikane” Lauture.

12:45pm – BREAK

2:15pm – Roundtable II – CHOREOGRAPHING RESIDENCIES
Drawing on artistic needs, how can we design malleable infrastructures of care than span extended periods of time and various geographies? How might the creative residency foreground issues of research and deceleration in a product-oriented economy? 

Panelists: Edgar Miramontes, Executive and Artistic Director, Center for the Art and Performance (CAP-UCLA), Los Angeles; Elsa Safarti, Director,  Espace 1789, Saint-Ouen; Catherine Tsekenis, Executive Director, Centre national de la Danse (CN D), Pantin; Marýa Wethers, Independent Creative Producer & Curator, New York.

Moderated by Judy Hussie-Taylor, Director, Danspace Project, New York.

Respondent: Ashley Ferro-Murray, Director, Arts Program, Doris Duke Foundation.

3:30pm – BREAK 

3:45pm – Artists Provocation II – Emmanuelle Huynh and Tara Lorenzen.

Friday, October 27

9:15 am – Welcome

9:30am –  Introduction

10am – Artists Provocation III – Dorothée Munyaneza and Will Rawls.

10:45am – BREAK 

11:00am – Roundtable III  – ACTS OF TRANSMISSION
What is the role of transmission in dance making and curating? How does it play out across practices of composition and performance, preservation and mediation? What are the strategies that enable choreographic works to live on; to reach out to and gather various assemblies thus bridging generational and cultural divides?  

Panelists: Anne Collod, Performer and Choreographer; Serge Laurent, Director of Dance and Culture Program, Van Cleef & Arpels; Linda Murray, Curator, Jerome Robbins Dance Collection, NYPL-Performing Arts; David Hamilton Thomson, Choreographer / performer. 

Moderated by André Lepecki , Professor Department of Performance Studies and Associate Dean, Center for Research & Study, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU

Respondent: Ruth Estévez, Independant curator.

12:15pm – BREAK 

1:15pm – Artists Provocation IV – Rachid Ouramdane and Lauren Bakst.

2:00pm – BREAK

2:15pm – Roundtable IV – CURATORIAL ECOLOGIES

What are the roles and responsibilities of dance curators today in regard to various artists, works, collectivities? How can we account for stark social inequalities, as well as the ecological challenges we face while continuing to nurture exchanges locally and internationally?

Panelists: Tanguy Accart, Deputy Director, Maison de danse/Director, Development, Lyon Dance Biennial; Philip Bither, Senior Curator, Performing Arts, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis;  Rachid Ouramdane, Choreographer and Director, Chaillot-Théâtre National de la Danse, Paris; Janet Wong, Associate Artistic Director, New York Live Arts.

Moderated by Angela Mattox, Senior Manager of Awardee Engagement, Creative Capital, New York.

Respondent: Ali Rosa Salas, VP of Visual and Performing Arts, Abrons Arts Center, New York.

3:30pm – Conclusions

Program subject to change. A detailed program with biographies of the speakers will be available soon.

About Noémie Solomon

Noémie Solomon works in the field of dance and performance as a writer, teacher, and curator. She edited the collections DANSE (an anthology and a catalogue published by Presses du réel, 2014 and 2015) that translate and present key texts on the somatic and linguistic trades between French and North American choreographic cultures. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies and is Director of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance.

About The Advisory Committee

To nurture the exchanges and develop the professional symposium, an Advisory Committee 2022-2023 has been created with twelve U.S. and French representatives led by Noémie Solomon as advisor and the Villa Albertine’s team.

It includes:

From The United States: Philip Bither, Senior Curator, Performing Arts, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN; Angela Mattox, Senior Manager of Awardee Engagement, Creative Capital, NY ; Sophie Myrtil-McCourty, Founder and Director, Lotus Arts Management, New York, NY; Anne-Gaëlle Saliot, Associate Professor of Romance Studies and Core Faculty of the Arts of the Moving Image program. Duke University, Durham, NC; Will Rawls, multidisciplinary choreographer working in dance, video and installation and associate professor, UCLA; Tara Aisha Willis, dancer and writer (ex Curator in Performance & Public Practice at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL.)

From France:  Catherine Tsekenis, Executive Director, Centre National de la Danse – CN D, Pantin; Gaëlle Massicot-Bitty, Director, Music and Live Arts, Institut français, Paris; Laurent Vinauger, Advisor, Dance, Ministry of Culture-délégation à la danse, Paris; Collectif FAIR-E, co-Directors – National Choreographic Center, Rennes; Tanguy Accart, Director, Productions and Development, Maison de la danse, Lyon; Serge Laurent, Director of Dance and Culture program,  Van Cleef & Arpels, Paris.

Credits:

Leadership support for Albertine Dance Season provided by ARDIAN.

Additional support for the professional symposium by Institut français, Howlround Theater Commons, and Centre National de la Danse (CN D)