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 features artists dialogues as well as roundtables with experts and one-on-one artists’ dialogues on topics such as choreographing residencies, pedagogy as performance, acts of transmission, and curatorial ecologies.

Curated by Noémie Solomon with the support of an Advisory Committee and the Albertine’s team.

The Professional Symposium is organized as part of the Albertine Dance Season: A year-long celebration of the art of dance from inception to performance. Check here for the Season’s programming.

Schedule

Thursday, October 26

9:00am – Welcome coffee & Introductions  

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

11:45am – BREAK

12pm –  Artists Provocation I

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 deceleratoin 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; Janet Wong, Associate Artistic Director, New York Live Arts, New York

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

3:30pm – BREAK 

3:45pm – Artists Provocation II 

Friday, October 27

9:30am – Welcome coffee & Introductions

10am – Artists Provocation III 

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; additional speakers to be confirmed.

12:15pm – BREAK 

1:15pm – Artists Provocation IV

2:00pm – BREAK

2:15pm – Roundtable IV – CURATORIAL ECOLOGIES
What are the challenges and affordances of dance and performance curation today? Can approaches and tactics grounded in local communities apply to global exchange? How to account for stark social inequalities, as well as the ecological challenges we face while continuing to nurture international relations? 

Panelists: Tanguy Accart, Director of Development and Artistic Projects, Biennale de la danse + Maison de la danse, Lyon; Philip Bither, Senior Curator, Performing Arts, Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis;  Rachid Ouramdane, Choreographer and Director, Chaillot-Théâtre National de la Danse, Paris + TBA

Moderated by Angela Mattox, Senior Manager of Awardee Engagement, Creative Capital, New York (ex- Curator, PICA)

3:30pm – Conclusions

Program subject to change, more information on the panelists coming 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 (ex Curator, PICA); 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.