Call for Artists- TransDance 2012

The dynamics of dance production in Egypt, and like theatre and visual arts, have been governed by the strong hegemony of the Ministry of Culture, since the institutionalization of cultural centres and practices, as a nationalist gesture during the Nasser regime and onwards. Dance and performance have been instrumentalized as one tool for political and socialist propaganda, as well as a backdrop to the pan-Arab nationalist discourse that was at its peak at the time, and stood as documents of their times. Decades later the ‘Arab world’ takes a different standpoint towards the dancing and performing body with the petrodollar Wahabist Islamic take over and project of ‘normalization’ of the whole Arabic Speaking region as a ‘Muslim land’, dismissing previous histories, specificities, and certainly stifling the bodies that remember and perform their memories, be it the post-colonial legacy in the current Ballet schools, the ‘nationalist Arabism’ incarnate in choreographies of Reda Troupe, or the contemporary resistance in works of choreographers from the 1990′s.

Conceived as an alternative proposition within a scene where dance and performance are not frequented sites of critical discourse or political action, ‘TransDance’ is a festival for dance that wishes to rethink through the moving performing body and its many scores possibilities. For this edition, the curatorial vision revisits the body as a document, as a site of memory and dance as a place where political action and discourse could be generated, within a context where the body is highly politicized and regulated. One then could dare state that perhaps dance in Egypt now is one of the ‘most political’ forms of artistic practices, inherently, and in and of itself regardless of the materiality and aesthetics of the score produced almost.

TransDance directs its invitation to local, regional and international artists, an invitation to rethink choreographically and respond performatively at a moment of institutional, political, personal, epistemological and social ruptures. The program invites artists to work with the possibility of activating choreography as a documentary practice, within a moment of history where we are embedded in hyper-documentation visually, orally, textually and other, since the eruption of Arab revolts in 2010. When documents are mass produced, one starts to think not of the information content, but of the gesture as an act of resistance, an act of revealing subjectivities, and a romantic poetic gesture of remembrance or commemoration.

TransDance 2012 is not just a dance festival, it is a festival where dance is a playground for transdisciplinary critical displacements and parcours. It is not a ‘revolution’ festival, yet it is a festival that is defined by where it exists currently; a region in revolt.

Artists can apply in one of the following projects:

- Silent Solos:
Solos that would be created without the use of music, lights, theatrical decor. The silent solos aim to reveal choreography in its purest form possible, questioning on dance as a document where sound and music could reside, invisibly, questioning on what traces of the social and political contexts do bodies leave within choreography
Duration: Between 20 minutes and open

- Radio-Dances:
Choreographers are invited to develop dance performances that would be presented on the radio as audio narratives of a dance; the memory of the dance, the sound of the dance, the invisible dance documented as words and voices.
Duration: Between 10 minutes and 40 minutes

Application Procedure:
Artists are requested to send two A4 pages application that contain information on the project they imagine to create, describing the work process, the main artistic references and interest points.

The application must contain a detailed CV or biography, with links to previous work of the artists that would be possible to review online.

The festival pays an artist fee, as well as takes care of all production and logistics costs to support the work presented

Deadline: 16 August 2012
Results will be announced within a few days after the deadline

For questions, and to submit an application:
[email protected]