Application deadline: 15 December 2018
For the seventh edition of the Dancing on the Edge Festival, to take place in November 2019, we are looking for contemporary dance and theater performances as well as multimedia and performance installations / films / art works / artistic research.
Since 2007 Dancing on the Edge (DOTE) continues to imagine and create bridges between artistic practices and people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA region) and the Dutch/European audience and cultural practitioners.
The MENA region is not perceived as a remote region that we need to find ways to represent or bring to Europe, the cultural practices emerging from the region are not in a fixed geographic place anymore. Due to migration and different forms of cultural exchange, people and artists from the region are all over Europe and are contributing to the European identity and the cultural and social sphere. The need to come together and imagine a shared life and future together is more urgent than ever, and DOTE engages creatively in doing that, embracing difference and complexity; confirming the need for fluid forms and identities yet rooted in engagement and curiosity.
The festival positions itself in the socio-political-economical context of our times, where borders are more visible, more exclusive and constantly shifting, where migration and the encounter with ‘the other’ and discussions on decolonization, inclusivity, equal opportunities and the politics of representation are urgent subjects. DOTE has, in its different activities, always addressed and created spaces for cultivating and sharing all the creative sides and aspects of an artistic process and production: from learning spaces, to presentation platforms, to exchange programs and events and so on.
This year we will approach the process of making the festival as a transparent creative process in itself, which will be developing and unfolding in conversation with artists, partners, cities and communities with a focus on a number of multi-layered questions (different spheres that we will explore).
We would like to invite the artists and partners to approach the festival and envision their participation in it, not only as a showcasing moment, but as a place to actively engage with the work of others and the overall festival program. We would like to invite artists to share the complexity of their practice, the contexts within which they work as well as what inspires their work with the audience and their peers. We will do our best to create innovative forms for doing that.
Such an approach is already in the DNA of the festival, it is the core of the organization and the festival, and this edition we are thinking of more innovative ways of making that visible and of making the process transparent. We would like to invite the artists to be real partners in that and to define their needs and interests with us, and to imagine with us the shape of the platform they want to be part of and exchange through. How can we really create alternative narratives and discourses around artistic practices from the MENA region together?
Guidelines
* The works should be of high artistic quality and be made/performed by professional level artists.
* We are looking for original work, made by artists with a personal signature.
* The works can still be in development at the time of the call.
* Performances can be short works to be presented as part of a mixed program or they can be full length productions.
* The work can be for theater or for non-traditional venues, such as site-specific locations, community venues, etc. It can also be an online artistic work or artistic research.
* Theater performances should be in English or suitable for surtitling. Those not in English should be sent with an English translation/summary.
* The group/artist should be from and/or working in the Middle East and North Africa or have a strong connection with the region.
* The group/artist want(s) to actively engage with the festival in sharing their practices and participate in different events.
How to apply?
We are now passed the deadline and do not accept any new applications.
For questions or more information, please write to office [at] dancingontheedge.nl
Procedure / Time Frame:
– Call out: November 2018
– Deadline: 15 December 2018
– March/April 2019: artists selected for a short list will be contacted and asked to fill in a more detailed form. A discussion will then also follow about how to participate in the different spheres of the festival. Candidates not selected for the short list will be informed as well.
– Summer 2019: final selection of the program of Dancing on the Edge Festival 2019.
