Livestream: Holland Dance Festival DanceAble Symposium 2024

A symposium that aims to question, celebrate, and challenge. This event will utilise presentations, talks, panel discussions, and workshops involving individuals from diverse areas of our industry. Through engaging with the inclusive dance sector and fostering dialogue among participants, the objective is to continually learn and evolve in our practices.

For this edition of the biennial DanceAble Symposium, Kimberley Harvey and Irene van Zeeland have collaborated to co-curate the upcoming fifth symposium. They’ve developed a program that seeks to be rich and evocative, providing ample time to explore specific questions that inspire the industry to progress. For this edition, they delve into the significance of advocacy within the field of dance artists with disabilities, both in the Netherlands and on the international stage.

What precisely do we mean when we reference advocacy or activism in the context of a disabled dance artist? How can we better support systemic change toward a more equitable and inclusive dance industry?

Featuring speakers like Diana Niepce (Portugal), Katarzyna Żeglicka (Poland), Leisa Prowd (Australia), Jone San Martin Astigarraga (Spain), and many more, the symposium aims to shed light on their practices and how they relate to themes of advocacy and/or activism. The goal is to highlight the intricacies within the dance sector that labels like ‘inclusive dance’ or ‘dance and disability’ may not fully capture.

Additionally, the collaboration with the British Council, featuring speakers like Andrew Miller, provides insights into the position of the Dutch sector in relation to the developments taking place in the United Kingdom, making this day absolutely worthwhile.

Tickets for the livestream of DanceAble Symposium 2024 are free, available from holland-dance.com. The symposium starts at 11am online (10am Irish time), 2 February 2024.

Image courtesy of Holland Dance.