Performing Gender –
Dancing in your shoes
Have you ever dance in someone else’s shoes?
European Project
The project
Dancing In Your Shoes is the third edition of the European project called Performing Gender.
Performing Gender – Dancing In Your Shoes is a three-year audience development project that aims to develop a link between culture professionals and their local communities in the field of dance and performing arts through a discussion on gender in the European dance system.
It is a comprehensive project that involves 11 cultural organizations from 8 European countries, 16 international dance makers, 9 artistic directors, 8 audience developers, 11 project managers, 3 academic researchers and 1 artistic consultant.
Goals
The goal is to involve 225 people from their respective local communities in a comprehensive training process in the field of artistic production, that aims at putting the spotlight on the marginal voices of their communities. We wanted to highlight issues such as inequality, ethnicity, class, disability, environment and economy, with an intersectional perspective.
These communities are part of a one-year-long co-design process of creative workshops. 8 performances and workshops will be created which will be presented in festivals and events organized by our partners.
3 steps
Sharing and disseminating our activities involves 3 important moments:
- First of all, an international Opening Lab developed by the Cassero LGBTI+ Center in March 2021 with various activities. The event will be open to internal and external participants of the project and to a wide audience.
- An international Closing Lab during the Boulevard Theater Festival in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in August 2023. On this occasion, what was created in the three-year period will be shown and discussed in an exhaustive way.
- A presentation at the European Parliament, coordinated by the Cassero LGBTI+ Center, the British Council and the European Agency EACEA.
Project info
Performing Gender – Dancing In Your Shoes coinvolge
In September 2022, during the 20th edition of the Gender Bender Festival, the artists and international partners involved in this project met in Bologna for a weekend full of artistic activities related to dance and different considerations on gender issues. The events alternated moments of discussion, exchange and listening to each other with dance and movement activities. At the end of it all, every dance maker provided their feedback. In the afternoon of the second day, the festival audience and the citizens of Bologna were able to see this work in a moment of dance improvisation and electronic music by Francesco Giomi, an Italian experimental music composer and sound director.
The contribution of the University of Bologna
The participation of the Department of Music and Performing Arts (DAMSLab) of the University of Bologna is particularly important. University researchers are editing a textbook that brings together the analysis of methodologies and an academic evaluation of the project’s impact on the artists and audiences that were involved.
The research results have come together in the Handbook Performing Gender – Dancing In Your Shoes, Building communities through artistic practices, a valuable document of over 100 pages that recounts the project in terms of goals and challenges, implementation and conclusion: from context analysis to methodology, from the involvement of local communities to the narrative of their feedback, also including recommendations for policy makers and international cultural professionals.
Community of Bologna
Over the course of three years, the Performing Gender – DIYS community in Bologna, coordinated by Gender Bender and the Cassero LGBTQIA+ Center, met regularly through movement, dance and other creative and performance workshops. Choreographers Aristide Rontini, Daniele Ninarello and Simona Bertozzi have shared their experience with hundreds of people of different ages, with and without dance experience. Thanks to this creative journey, a heterogeneous community was born and it collectively gave birth to Crowded Bodies, the final performance directed by Daniele Ninarello. The show was first staged in 2023 in Bologna on the occasion of Portici Festival – Heritage Meets Creativity, and Gender Bender Festival; it was then taken in 2024 to some European venues of the project partners, and then gained new light and life through a national and international tour.
Crowded Bodies
A collective body expressing the need for intimacy, trust, closeness, and tenderness.
A live-collage of portraits in progress, in which each performer offers their own intimate and precious vulnerability to the group and to the audience, in a game of mutual listening and sharing gestures, driven by mutual trust and the desire for closeness, welcome, unity, understanding.
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