Official message
for Dance Day
29
April 2007
This year's Dance Day is dedicated to the children.
The International Dance Council CID UNESCO, together with UNICEF, the
United Nations Children’s Fund, fights for measures to give children the best
start in life, because proper education forms the strongest foundation for a
person’s future.
We believe that caring for children is the cornerstone of human
progress. Our primary goal is to overcome the obstacles that poverty, violence,
disease and discrimination place in a child’s path. Thus we advance the cause
of humanity.
Dance is a basic component of personal and societal development. We
recommend quality basic education in dance for all children with an emphasis on
gender equality and eliminating disparities of all kinds.
No child should be left without the opportunity to learn and to practice
dance. Access to the art consitutes a right for every person, and children in
particular. This right should be protected, in order to help meet their basic
needs and reach their full potential.
CID upholds dance instruction by qualified teachers at all levels of
formal education, because dance constitutes a strong foundation for a person’s
well being.
Prof. Alkis Raftis
President of the International Dance Council CID
UNESCO, Paris
Dance Day
preparations
On the 29th
of April, as every year since 1982, World Dance Day will be celebrated all over
the world by the international community of dancers and dance enthusiasts.
The
International Dance Council CID has prepared the following guidelines as a
useful checklist for persons institutionally involved in the wider field of
dance: teachers, choreographers, group leaders, journalists, researchers,
associations, suppliers, organizations etc.
Object
The main
purpose of Dance Day events is to attract the attention of the wider public to
the art of dance. Special emphasis should be given to addressing a “new”
public, people who do not follow dance events during the course of the year.
Events
Dance Day
events may be special performances, open-door courses, public rehearsals,
lectures, exhibitions, articles in newspapers and magazines, dance evenings,
radio and TV programs, visits, street shows etc.
Organizers
Events are
primarily organized by dance companies, amateur groups, schools, associations
and other institutions active in dance. Wherever possible, it is better for
events to be organized jointly with a non-dance institution such as a
government agency, a public school, a municipality, a business enterprise, a
trade union.
Content
Organizers
have full freedom to define the content of the event.
Make sure
that you include general information on the art of dance, its history, its
importance to society, its universal character. This can be done in a short
speech, a note in the program, a text distributed to those present. By adding
this dimension you make the event different from dance activities taking place
any other day.
Read a
message from a prominent personality, a poem, a passage from a text by a famous
author.
Coordination
In order to
achieve maximum success, it is important that preparations start early enough.
It is
imperative to inform the press and generally the media about your event.
Notify an
organization holding a central position at regional or national level, which
should publish a list of events planned for Dance Day.
Entrance to
events should preferably be free, or by invitation. Invite persons who do not
normally attend dance events.
Location
At best,
events should take place in “new” places, such as streets, parks, squares,
shops, factories, villages, discotheques, schools, stadiums etc.
By setting the
event in original surroundings you stress the fact that this is an event
dedicated to the universal family of dancers.
Prof. Alkis
Raftis
President
of the CID
*********************************************************
1.
Please translate the message to the language of your country (if
applicable) and send it to the Press and to dance organizations.
2. World
Dance Day has been established in 1982 in view of attracting attention to the
art of dance, every year on the 29th of April.
On that day, dance companies, dance schools,
organizations and individuals are asked to organize an activity addressing an
audience larger than their usual one.
3. The International Dance Council (Conseil
International de la Danse - CID) is the official umbrella organization for all
forms of dance in all countries of the world.
It is a non-governmental non-profit
organization (NGO) founded in 1973 within the UNESCO headquarters in Paris,
where it is based.
Its purpose is to act as a worldwide forum
bringing together international, national and local organizations as well as
individuals active in dance.
It represents the interests of the dance world
at large and consults accordingly governments and international agencies.
International Dance Council - CID - Conseil
International de la Danse
UNESCO, Paris, France
====================================
Official message
for Dance
Day
29
April 2006
Dancers are
notoriously reluctant to join collective organizations.
They are
probably afraid that organizing will restrict their freedom to express
themselves.
Or they
think that the time spent and the membership fee are not worth the benefits
gained.
Many
associations or federations have only a few dozen members: a small fraction of
the total in their area or field.
Lacking in
representativity they lack credibility, thus they cannot act as interlocutors
of governments and other high-level bodies. They cannot inspire confidence in
non-members.
This
explains why the art of dance lacking in legislation, in visibility, in
financing, when compared to other arts.
Belonging
to a wider structure does not limit the way one performs, or teaches, or
researches, or makes choreographies. Without influencing one's everyday work,
it inproves the framework, the environment of one's action.
Collective
bodies provide a wider spectrum of services to their members. Deprived of such
services by acting in isolation, schools, companies, clubs, festivals will
remain handicapped.
CID
encourages the strengthening of regional, national or branch associations by
enlarging their membership.
Let us combine
our actions, let us orchestrate our music by escaping the cacophony of isolated
sounds.
Dancers of
the world, unite!
Prof. Alkis
Raftis
President
of the International Dance Council
CID,
UNESCO, Paris
******************************************
1. The
official Dance Day message is mailed to over 100,000 dance professionals in 200
countries. It is translated to dozens of languages. Please ask for a
translation, or translate the message to the language of your country; send it
to dance organizations and the media. You can find guidelines and previous
messages at the CID web site.
2. Dance
Day has been established in 1982 in view of attracting attention to the art of
dance, every year on the 29th of April. On that day, dance companies, dance
schools, organizations and individuals, professionals as well as amateurs, are
asked to organize an activity addressing an audience larger than their usual
one.
3. The International Dance Council (Conseil
International de la Danse - CID) is the official umbrella organization for all
forms of dance in all countries of the world.
It is a non-governmental non-profit
organization founded in 1973 within the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, where it
is based.
It is a worldwide forum bringing together
international, national and local organizations as well as individuals.
It represents the interests of the dance world at large and consults
accordingly governments and international agencies.
Conseil
International de la Danse - CID - International Dance Council
UNESCO, Paris, France
www.cid-unesco.org
=============
World Dance Day message 29 April 2005
Dear colleagues
World Dance Day is among the most important projects
of the International Dance Council CID.
This year's focus is on primary education.
I would like to ask you to contact the Ministry of
Education on behalf of the CID, asking them to issue a circular to all schools
in your country. You can urge state or private agencies to issue similar
guidelines on a regional scale.
In every class, pupils can write an essay about dance,
draw a dance scene, sing dance songs, read relative passages from books,
collect pictures (photos, postage stamps, postcards etc.). They can dance in
the yard or - better - out in the streets.
It is extremely important that Dance Day becomes as
well known and as widely followed as Mother's Day. And this begins at the
youngest ages, who represent the future of our art.
I count on your cooperation in this matter and look
forward to your remarks.
Cordially
Prof. Alkis Raftis
President of the International Dance Council CID
World Dance
Day message 29 April 2004
Dance is the architecture of human movements
The architect uses technical materials to create a
construction in a particular place. The choreographer uses intangible forms, to
create an impression in place and time.
An architect has two dimensions: he is an engineer and an
artist at the same time. An engineer because he thinks rationally (in contrast
to the sculptor, who also creates works in a particular place), inasmuch as he
his work must have a usable value. His creations are based on an understanding
of the behaviour of his materials - he is a technician. But he is also an
artist, because he seeks to achieve an aesthetically pleasing result.
The choreographer, as an architect of movements, is, first
of all, a technician. He knows the possibilities of the body (anatomy,
physiology, pathology). His knowledge is based on experience, since he has
sweated on the dance floor, as the good architect has paced for years on the
scaffolding of his building-sites. And of course he must delight the spectator
and/or make him think.
The making of both choreographers and architects requires:
(a) extensive practical training, "taking the clay in their hands",
dancing and teaching dance.
(b) extensive study, research, reading and reflection, to gain the necessary
theoretical equipment.
How then can one explain the great paradox: Whereas
there are university schools for architects in every country, there are no
equivalents for choreographers and dance teachers?
One can count on one's fingers the countries where young people can continue
their studies - practical and theoretical at the same time - beyond the age of
eighteen. And even there such schools are under-supported and under-resourced.
One of the lines of action of the International Dance
Council CID is to persuade governments to create high level dance departments
in universities. It is to this objective that this year's World Dance Day is
dedicated.
Prof. Alkis Raftis
President of the International Dance Council CID
World Dance Day message 29 April 2003
On this special day I would ask all fellow dancers to
stop for a second, in order to ponder on global issues concerning dance. There
are quite a number of such issues. Here are only some of them.
There are several countries in the world where dance does not even exist in the
eyes of the state. Its practise is barely tolerated. Professional dancers are
outcasts of society, amateur dancing is to be seen within the family circle
only.
In more than half of the 200 countries in the world, dance does not appear in
legal texts (for better or for worse!). There are no funds allocated in the
state budget to support this art form. There is no such thing as dance
education, private or public.
In most cities of the world there is an acute shortage of dance spaces. Unlike
music, dance needs considerable room to evolve (on the other hand, dancers do
not have to buy instruments - they use their bodies!). Municipal authorities
admit that city people need to dance too, but do nothing to provide the spaces
required by amateurs or professionals to practice or to perform.
There are many more issues concerning dance as a whole, whether on a national
or international scale. I would not advise choreographers, instructors,
performers, students, or one-evening-a-week amateurs to think about these
issues too often - and spoil the deep joy that dance provides!
But on the 29th of April, for a few seconds only, a thought should be given to
the unfortunate ones in faraway places whose access to dance is barred or
hampered.
And for the rest of the day, we can look around us and do something to bring
dance to those who do not benefit from its charms during the other days of the
year.
Prof. Alkis Raftis
President of the International Dance Council CID
World Dance Day
message
29 April 2002
Yo puedo bailar en
un templo sin profanarlo
(I can dance in a temple without profaning it).
Vicente Escudero (1892-1980),
Spanish flamenco dancer
These
eight words give the essence of good dance. They should be our compass in cases
when commercialized dance in the rich countries deviates towards a meaningless
sequence of movements.
Choreography
is corrupted by the frantic quest for innovation.
Dance
teaching is degraded by the blind concentration on steps.
Dance
research is impoverished by the idealization of structure analysis.
Too
often we forget to ask ourselves if this or that dance is really beautiful, if
it carries values, if it will resist the ultimate test of time.
Dance
in itself is not sacred, but it can stand beside the sacred, as a means to
transcend reality, a tool for liberation, a way of acquiring another self.
Not
all creations can be fit to dance in a temple - just as we cannot always wear
Sunday clothes.
We
therefore need to educate the public in developing qualitative criteria: how to
tell "Sunday dances" from "everyday dances".
Our
dances should at least be good enough to dance outside a temple.
Prof. Alkis Raftis
President of the
International Dance Council CID
Dance
Day message of the International Dance Council 29 April 2001
The
International Dance Council - CID - dedicates the first year of the century to
the introduction of dance in public education.
Learning
dance in traditional societies was done without teachers. Children learned by themselves,
copying adults at home, in the neighbourhood, at village feasts and other
ceremonies. Most important: children saw that dance matters, that adult dancers
were saying something with their dance, something important. When the time
came, they entered the public scene officially, demonstrating their ability to
express rhythm and song by movements, to evolve in unison with their fellow
dancers and to be creative in space with their body.
Today,
very few are the lucky children that have that fortune. In most villages
time-honoured celebrations do not take place any more, while at homes parents
watch television rather than dance to singing with their children. Most
children in the world grow up in towns or near towns, and acquire most of their
knowledge in school rather than in the family or the village.
Dance
should not be absent from basic education. Among all arts, it is the most
appropriate for today's children, because it forms body and soul concurrently.
No wonder it was an integral part of the cultured man in Ancient Greece. It is
not enough just having dance in the curriculum; it must be taught as a
meaningful activity, a vital means of communication - not as a dead language.
We
urge the Ministries of Education of all countries to elaborate programs taking
into account the views of specialists. I would like to ask every member of the
C.I.D. world-wide, every dance person, every educator, to contribute to the
introduction of dance in primary and secondary education.
Prof.
Alkis Raftis President
Dance
Day message of the International
Dance Council 29 April 2000
In
this last year of the 20th century, it is imperative to look back and attempt a
bird’s eye view of the course of events regarding dance in the last hundred
years.
Two
major events will distinguish this past century’s state of the dance on a
world-wide perspective. Two new dance genres emerged at its outset, grew
consistently throughout its span, and had created a new space for their
respective forms by the end of the twentieth century: folk and modern dance.
Folk
dance appeared when amateur dancers in the cities discovered they could
practice traditional, that is peasant, dances for recreation and for stage
presentation. These same dances were being abandoned steadily by their original
practitioners, the rural populations in traditional cultures.
Modern
dance was born when professional dancers rejected the constraints of classical
ballet and presented performances based on individual expression and their
concepts of what constituted free movement.
During
this century, classical ballet gained in variety, depth and refinement, in
perfecting its incomparable technique, and in spreading to many countries who
had not known it before.
Ballroom
dance acquired new friends and new methods, and expanded into the novel field
of competition dance. Its “closed couple” dances found a counterpart in popular
dance fashions that swept the youth of the world, like rock ‘n’ roll and
discothèques.
It
was a century of renaissance and “naissance” in dance.
Turning
now to the next century, we would like to see:
-
More communication between families of dance, though not abolishing the
borderlines between them.
-
Return to the ancestral global vision of dance, as part of an event
incorporating music, movement, theater, song. Arts have shown a marked tendency
to isolate themselves; they lose their poetic content in the process.
-
More knowledge of the past, more consciousness of belonging to a line of
evolution. There has been a rampant idolization of innovation. Even the wildest
revolutionaries should know well what they revolt against. Even the most
inspired creators cannot do without the study of their predecessors.
-
More visibility for dance. In the past centuries dance used to be omnipresent
in private and public life, while during this century its practice has
retracted. Now sports have audiences ten times larger than dance.
The
recent boom of the last two decades is evidence supporting an optimistic view
of the future, for amateur as well as for professional dancers.
Prof. Alkis Raftis President of the CID