RELAY Urban Camping in Bucharest

23 September – 1 October 2022

In the framework of the European project RELAY – Thinking Artistic Material in Music and Dance (2021-2024), the National Center for Dance, together with the National University of Music Bucharest and the National University of Theatre and Film “I.L. Caragiale” Bucharest, organizes an Urban Camping for 18 participants from Denmark, Germany, Greece and Romania, including new students of the Academy of Dance and Performance. The Camping program includes workshops, presentations, visits, mentoring sessions and jam sessions.

Teachers/trainers: Mihai Mihalcea, Cătălin Crețu, Andreea Duță, Rasmus Ölme, Vera Sander, Jan Burkhardt, Konstantinos Tsakirelis

Guests: Dan Dediu, Floriama Cândea, Marian Zamfirescu, Ladislau Csendes, Lucian Zbarcea

RELAY is an interdisciplinary research and training project focusing on artistic and educational development in dance, choreography and music/composition, bringing together multiple interlinked perspectives:

THE ARTISTIC PERSPECTIVE – Inspired by the premise that movement can be a lens for investigating the supposed dualism between the material and immaterial, the project explores how dance and music can find common ground in such an approach.

THE PEDAGOGICAL PERSPECTIVE – Arts education has innovative potential in student-driven learning environments. This is pursued at the same time by investigating how principles of sustainability can be found and/or applied in the field of artistic research, teaching and art production.

SUSTAINABILITY – Dance and music are artistic practices that are independent of linguistic codes and therefore have immense potential for globalization, and their practitioners travel frequently. RELAY also offers participants a framework to explore how to work in a climate-conscious way with transnational and intercultural exchanges, which are fundamental elements in the development of these art forms.

MULTITUDENESS OF PERSPECTIVES – Geographically, RELAY brings together partners from northern, central, eastern and southern Europe, and also brings a difference in the form of organization that partners represent, mixing academic institutions with independent organizations.

All these are geared towards sustainable conditions for the work-life balance and career longevity of the practitioner, as well as greater awareness of local contexts and situated knowledge.

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During the Olympics in Rio 2016 the Japanese team unexpectedly won the silver medals in the men’s 4×100 meter relay final. The surprising part was that individually all team members ran slower than their competitors and the secret to their success was instead due to their work with optimizing the hand overs of the baton from one runner to the next, saving them precious seconds in the tight race.

The above story is a good analogy to the purpose of the RELAY project: to foster collaboration, intermediary relationships and transmissions between partners, the artists involved, and the audience they come into contact with.

RELAY - Thinking Artistic Material in Music and Dance is a project co-funded by the European Union and supported by the ERASMUS+ programme "Cooperation Partnerships".

To find out more details regarding the whole period of the project, please visit the dedicated section here.