BIG UPDATE! a NEW Symposium and more…

Towards a New Symposium….

The IDOCDE symposium held in the summer of 2022 was IDOCDE’s 10th symposium. Those that attended, I’m sure, felt something celebratory in the tender atmosphere that emerged from that gathering. We didn’t quite know it at the time but this atmosphere was the atmosphere of simultaneously saying congratulations and goodbye to IDOCDE.

In the interest of gathering support and resources towards a focus on doing (instead of documenting research and knowledge-making in dance and other contemporary practices) we are joining the ImPulsTanz Dance Festival in developing the workshop and research aspects of the festival. This includes but is not limited to expanding and developing the symposium and residency format beyond its existing capacities.

To support our growth and development we’ve decided to interlace our program more deeply with the ImPulsTanz Dance Festival and transform the IDOCDE symposium into the ImPulsTanz symposium for Dance and Other Contemporary Practices — LACE #1. This is one way we’ve found so far to address the fact that the symposium outgrew its original design and is ready to look towards new horizons.

The summer of 2023 will see the first instalment of the ImPulsTanz symposium for Dance and Other Contemporary Practices, LACE #1: Topographies of Touch.

The transformed symposium will be organised using familiar methodologies: experimental, state-of-the-arts methodologies resourced from the field of knowledge-making emergent from the study of embodiment, improvisation, and somatics.

Deirdre Morris, Dilek Üstünalan, and pavleheidler will continue in the role of the Curatorial Team. Kerstin Kussmaul remains a part of the team as a member of the Board of Directors formed together with Andreas Barth and Rio Rutzinger. Two new members are joining — Caterina Mocciola and Sylvia Scheidl, whose exact roles are yet to be determined.

Brief History of the IDOCDE project

The IDOCDE project operated with support of the Erasmus+ program as IDOCDE, LEAP, and Mind the Dance between 2011 and 2017.

The IDOCDE website was one of the earliest outcomes of the IDOCDE project (first round of Erasmus+ funding). The IDOCDE website served professional and independent dance educators in gathering knowledge and evidence of (non- or not-yet-institutionalised) expertise in one place, free from restrictions decided by expertise external to the fields of dance education and practice-based artistic research. 

*In 2023, the IDOCDE website will be retired from active usage and given archival properties. More on that soon.

During the LEAP years (Learn, Exchange, Apply, Practice; second round of Erasmus+ funding),  a group of 12 European dance artists and pedagogues met regularly to engage in practice-based knowledge in dance education practices, all the while studying modes of documentation and presenting research findings in local meetings, via the IDOCDE website, and at the IDOCDE symposium.

The Mind the Dance period (third round of Erasmus+ funding) saw a new group of researchers and partner institutions put together a resource–a website and a book–intended to aid dance professionals in articulating various approaches to documenting their (movement, research) practice.

In 2019, the Mind The Dance project was nominated for the Erasmus+ award for best practice by the Austrian OeAD — Agency for Education and Internationalisation.

The IDOCDE symposium

In the decade it’s been in operation, it was the IDOCDE symposium—the IDOCDE project’s annual outreach event—that revealed itself as the all-round most rewarding aspect of the project. The IDOCDE symposium saw hundreds of professionals gather at the ImPulsTanz Dance Festival in Vienna or via Zoom every summer since the summer of 2012. With every gathering, the purpose of the symposium developed in conversation with the people we’ve learned to lovingly address as “the members of the IDOCDE community”.

The IDOCDE symposium strived to become the event that will successfully meet the needs of its growing community of supporters; most evident of all: the need for a place to meet like minded individuals whose reports of experiencing struggle inform our own experiences. 

It is with this focus on the needs for growth in our community that we welcome ImPulsTanz’s support in developing a symposium and residency with broader reach and scope. The topic of the next symposium will be released shortly and will include an OPEN CALL geared towards several presentational formats.

We look forward to your presence at the the first instalment of the ImPulsTanz symposium for Dance and Other Contemporary Practices  LACE #1: Topographies of Touch.

Until soon,

pavleheidler & Deirdre Morris for LACE #1, the ImPulsTanz symposium for Dance and Other Contemporary Practices, Summer ‘23

Current and Past Team Members

(alphabetical)

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all current and past members of the Team, whose work over the years contributed to the development of the Curatorial and Managerial practices that helped create the conditions necessary for continual learning and development of this symposium, and the project at large.

Claire Blaschke

Andrea Boll

Defne Erdur

Eszter Gàl

Kerstin Kussmaul

Deirdre Morris

Lieve de Pourcq

Olivia Schellander

Dilek Üstünalan 

pavleheidler

Thank you all for your dedication and support of the International Documentation of Contemporary Dance Education!