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SEEDS Project – South-East European Dance Stations

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SEEDS – South East European Dance Stations is a collaborative artistic project developed by The National Center for Dance Bucharest (CNDB), Brain Store Project Foundation (Sofia), and Station — Service for Contemporary Dance (Belgrade). 

SEEDS began as a local initiative in Bucharest, when CNDB designed and led the Academy for Dance and Performance (2019–2020), a pioneering program that trained emerging Romanian artists in contemporary dance. Amid conversations with European guest teachers during the Academy, something became clear to the team at CNDB: the challenges faced by young dance artists in Romania were similar across the region. The lack of resources, education opportunities, and artist mobility wasn’t a local issue — it was systemic, and it was shared. This realization sparked an idea. What if the Academy’s concept could be expanded and reimagined as a regional project? 

Along with Brain Store Project Foundation in Sofia and Stanica – Service for Contemporary Dance in Belgrade, two organizations equally committed to the evolution of contemporary dance in their own countries, SEEDS project emerged. Each organization brought years of experience, artistic vision and engagement in local and international scenes.

There is a history of artistic innovation in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania, where choreographers and collectives have pushed the boundaries of modern and contemporary dance since the 20th century. Due to a chronic shortage of funding, training opportunities, and platforms for exposure, many young artists started looking elsewhere — often migrating to Western Europe in search of artistic survival.

SEEDS core mission is transnational: to support the creation, co-production, and circulation of contemporary dance works across Europe. It’s also about rebuilding infrastructure through professional training, co-creative practices, and building audiences that can sustain the work.

The project stems from a shared reality among the three partner countries: the situation of dance and performance artists. SEEDS has succeeded in providing opportunities for these artists to work intensively with professionals in the field, to have a professional environment that helps them focus (solely) on their work, and, ultimately, to have at their disposal tools for individual artistic development in broader contexts than their “home” ones.

The central point of the project’s vision for strengthening the field of contemporary dance not only in Romania has been, beyond the obvious benefits of international cooperation, the quality of the artistic act and the broadening of the professional horizon. Although difficult to quantify, the quality criterion is evident in the future productions of the artists in the program, in the level of creative responsibility that they will carry forward.

– Vava Ștefănescu, CNDB Manager

SEEDS officially kicked off in May 2022, during CNDB’s Iridescent Festival in Bucharest — as the city’s dance community came together for workshops and strategic planning with the international partners.

The Academy for Dance and Performance, the cornerstone of the project, launched with a call for participants in the summer of 2022. After an intensive selection process, a group of 12 aspiring dancers and performers began their journey that fall.

The training program ran from October 2022 to June 2023 — a full eight months of immersive education in Bucharest, guided by international mentors and rooted in contemporary practice. As the academy took shape, SEEDS also turned its attention to the often-overlooked role behind the scenes: the producer. A parallel training track for Romanian, Serbian and Bulgarian dance producers was developed and launched in early 2023, addressing a critical gap in the region’s cultural infrastructure. 

Both programs culminated in a public graduation event in June 2023, featuring two original performances by the students.

In its second phase, the project shifted from training to creation and co-production. Three new choreographic works emerged from the collaboration, each led by a different regional artist and developed with recent Academy graduates and local performers:

Each piece explores relevant themes — from resilience to identity to collective action — and each embodied the spirit of transnational co-creation that defines SEEDS. These works then toured the region, featuring at major contemporary dance festivals: Antistatic in Sofia, Kondenz in Belgrade and Iridescent in Bucharest.

Beyond the training, co-creation and circulation of artistic works, SEEDS cultivated the community and conversation. Through a series of six workshops held across the partner countries, local dance communities were invited to share, reflect, and strategize together. These gatherings helped build networks among artists, producers, and institutions.

Beyond the training, co-creation and circulation of artistic works, SEEDS cultivated the community and conversation. Through a series of six workshops held across the partner countries, local dance communities were invited to share, reflect, and strategize together. These gatherings helped build networks among artists, producers, and institutions.

We believe that the project’s most important achievements are:

  • Establishing a unique, region-specific training model for dancers and producers;
  • Creating sustainable career paths for emerging artists in the region;
  • Contributing to the professionalization of cultural producers;
  • Creating three inspiring international choreographic works
  • Expanding regional audiences through circulation of the artistic works
  • Building trust and cooperation among regional partners, proving that meaningful collaboration is essential.

Partners

Brain Store Project (BG)

Contemporary dance is our religion and SEEDS is a chapter of our Holy Book, which strengthens our voice for more art educational practices and vibrant collaborations in South Eastern Europe.

Now and always, we will preach for the transformative power of contemporary art, as we as individuals, society, Europeans need it. Through SEEDS we bring change – of skills, mindsets, thoughts, imaginations, partnerships, lives. We cross boundaries, step beyond politics and stereotypes, and celebrate ethics, freedom, connections, understanding.

With dance and personal values, we will conquer!

– Iva Sveshtarova & Willy Prager, Brain Store Project

The Brain Store Project was founded in 2005 by a group of artists working in the field of performing arts. The organisation develops two main activities: organising alternative educational programs and events in the field of contemporary dance and performance, and production of artistic works. Brain Store Project is the co-founder and organiser of the Antistatic – International Festival for Contemporary Dance and Performance (antistaticfestival.org) and editor producer of the annual print magazine “Magazine for dance”.

Station – Service for Contemporary Dance (RS)

Station stands for community, sharing, care and mutual support. Contemporary dance is a practice capable of gathering people, showing what support for others is, and proving that art and culture or community building have no national borders. Station was created as a platform for contemporary dancers and choreographers, producers, curators and other colleagues to advocate for the dance field to be acknowledged by cultural policies in the countries in our region. We believe that only together we can achieve structural changes in our field. This is why SEEDS was made to add additional force to these common struggles, to intensify collaboration and exchange in the region, and to showcase the importance of coupling of dance education, dance production, and cultural policies for dance. 

– Marijana Cvetkovic, co-founder of Station

Station – Service for contemporary dance is a bottom-up initiative of the contemporary dance and performing arts community in Serbia, established in 2005. It has been working towards making this community strengthened, structured, and recognized as a dynamic, critical and inclusive player on a local, regional, and international cultural scenes. Station supports the develop-ment of the contemporary dance scene in Serbia through the education, production and promotion of emerging or established artists, dancers, and choreographers, the Kondenz Festival, as well as advocacy for better working conditions for artists, international cooperation and other programs that make contemporary dance a relevant player in the cultural and social context of Serbia and the Balkan Region. Station is one of the founders of Nomad Dance Academy network. 

SEEDS is coordinated by the National Center for Dance Bucharest and carried out in partnership with the Brain Store Project Foundation (Sofia) and Stanica – Service for Contemporary Dance (Belgrade) in the period between 2022 and 2025. The SEEDS project is co-financed by the European Union through the Creative Europe program.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.