Dance for Communities and Wellbeing
The connection between dance and well-being is one of the dearest to me, as I’ve experienced it firsthand. If dramaturgy is a constant thread in everything I do, within these projects, I’ve taken on multiple roles: to foster encounters between diverse people and dance, while also supporting the professional development of dance artists.
Dance Well is a contemporary dance practice for people living with Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders, open and accessible to everyone.
Within the European project (2022–2025), my role included communication management, coordination of international partners and training courses, editorial supervision of video and photographic documentation, special projects and dissemination events for the research produced, as well as community care and engagement.
Here the final publication including a short essay I wrote on dancing in an intergenerational context.
Dance and soft skills at school
Design, development, and monitoring of feedback practices with teenage students and their teachers participating in Dance Well classes and dance activities, with a focus on soft skills and the well-being fostered by contemporary dance in an intergenerational context. My article on this topic appears on page 22 of the Dance Well EU publication.
This practice emerged from my experience in the Shape It and Empowering Dance projects, and was further developed within Dance Well.
Masako Matsushita's Diary of a Move
Community building and care support for the project Diary of a Move, launched in 2020 as a movement diary kept by volunteers (often marking their first encounter with contemporary dance) and later developed into a choreography, exhibition, and a documentary.
Part of the extra activities of Dancing Museums.
Dancing the Horizontal
Dancing The Horizontal was an international exchange programme supported by the British Council, involving Yorkshire Dance and CSC in Bassano del Grappa. The project offered a deep exploration of artistic practice through an exchange between three artists—Kate Cox and Rachel Fullegar (Gracefool Collective), and Silvia Gribaudi—and local communities of older adults, nurturing choreographic research and expanding the definition of beauty.
Choreography Connects
Choreography Connects was a project dedicated to socially engaged artistic practices, bringing together CoisCéim Broadreach in Ireland, CSC in Italy, and Le Gymnase CDCN in Roubaix, France.
It supported new approaches to participatory practices that promote diversity—cultural, natural, and social—in the everyday lives of communities.
My role was that of producer, working alongside dramaturg Monica Gillette and the artists Vittoria Caneva (Italy), Marion Carriau (France), Justine Cooper (Ireland), Chiara Frigo (Italy), Aoife McAtamney (Ireland), and Betty Tchomanga (France).
Audience Club - Pivot Dance
Audience Club Management for the Pivot Dance project: a group of individuals curious about the language of contemporary dance, who wished to engage with it through encounters with artists, performers, dramaturge Peggy Olislaegers, and curators.
Pivot Dance was a project supported by Creative Europe.
ph. H. Kushnirenko