Within Practice is a seven-day meeting between professional dancers and students from DOCH and interested members of the public. The symposium focuses on practice and practices from the practitioner’s perspective, and includes workshops and public presentations.
The concept of practice(s) is widely-used within dance and choreography today, some would say overused. The concept of practice can provide an opportunity to move beyond the projectification of the art, and instead insist on other long-term approaches. Practice can offer a way of generating choreography and movement, to train/repeat (to practice). In Within practice, we aim to emphasise the inherently experimental and insistent qualities of practices, and offer a space for practising, discussions and artists’ presentations, and continue to build community among practitioners.
“As dance artists, we often talk about practice(s) as a concept, but in public contexts we seldom go into detail in discussing how and why a certain practice is constructed as it is. To understand and experience a practice, I believe that we need to practice it, see it from the outside and set it against our own. The format of the symposium attempts to give space for these perspectives and to create a meeting ground for sharing.”
—Björn Säfsten, initiator
In the invitations to the artists Caroline Byström, Alice Chauchat, Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, Chrysa Parkinson, Salva Sanchis and Arkadi Zaides, the discussion on their practices was central. Each artist included in the program during Within Practice will carry out six workshops over four days and then give a public presentation.
Within Practice also offers a third format, a type of open source, Practice/s—An Evening of Open Source with Open Space, in which all the participants contribute their own practices.
The project will run simultaneously with Weld Company’s invitation to choreographer Yvonne Rainer to choreograph a new work for the company. We share the interest and overlap. During the presentation phase in Eric Ericssonhallen in Stockholm, the original version of Rainers Trio A (1966) will be danced during one of the evenings, to set an iconic work, its practice and history, in resonance with discussions of what contemporary practices can be today.
Welcome!
- Björn Säfsten, Initiator and Curator, Säfsten Production
- Anna Efraimsson, Co-curator and Head of Department of Dance at DOCH/Stockholm University of the Arts
- Magnus Nordberg, Initiator and Head of production, Nordberg Movement
- Anja Arnquist, Producer and coordinator Eric Ericssonhallen, Säfsten Production
Within Practice is a collaboration between Säfsten Production and the Department of Dance at DOCH/Stockholm University of the Arts with support by the Swedish Arts Council, Stockholm Stad and the Swedish Arts Grants Committee.