News

Explore the highlights of our recent conference in Ljubljana, held from July 7th to July 12th, through a comprehensive documentary of the event. Featuring a collection of images, videos, statements, and important documents, you can capture the key moments and activities of the conference.

Looking ahead, we are excited about our next conference, which will take place in Malaysia in 2027. Join the daCi community to stay connected and engaged with our network. Membership offers opportunities for collaboration, networking, and access to exclusive resources.

Dancing into Communities took place in 2022 and was daCi's15th conference. The conference took place from July 10-15 and was hosted virtually for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Please enjoy the proceedings now published by York University and accessible here.

Permanent URL for the collection:https://hdl.handle.net/10315/42081 

INTRODUCTION:

It is said that there is nothing so consistent as change. This is particularly true of the daCi 2022 Conference, which was originally planned to occur in July 2021 at York University in Toronto, Canada. When the COVID pandemic created a world health crisis, we postponed the conference for one year. However, due to the continued precarity of gathering together, we ultimately made the decision to offer the conference virtually. While the preparations leading up to the daCi 2022 Conference were extremely challenging, we were very pleased that the responses during and after the conference were very positive.

The content was a carefully calculated blend of pre-recorded students’ dance performances, papers, posters, and workshops with live presentations by most keynote speakers, along with many panels, workshops, papers, and research discussions. Every session concluded with a live ‘Question and Answer’ period so that delegates could chat, and discussion rooms were available for casual visits among colleagues. Each day began at 7 am Eastern time and concluded by 10 pm Eastern time with large breaks throughout the day. This facilitated registrants across all time zones to participate throughout their day at convenient times for them.

In large part our ‘virtual’ success was due to the tremendous commitment and expertise of the technology experts at York University, for which we are very grateful. Technology rehearsals were available and smoothed the way for all speakers, leaders, and moderators.

The Opening Ceremony presented inspiring young dancers from 7 performing groups from across Canada. We were welcomed by Susan Koff, outgoing daCi Chair from the USA, and Jeff Meiners, the then-incoming Chair from Australia. During the conference, 130 young people participated in Creative Gatherings and Exploring our Futures sessions that were led by a total of 16 facilitators. Each group included dancers from different countries, with young people from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Uganda, Jamaica, the USA, South Africa and Barbados having the opportunity to create dances and talk with one another.

Exploring our Futures was a new initiative that focused on the importance of Good Health and Well-being, one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The discussions around mental health were greatly appreciated by everyone.

Another new initiative was the Indigenous Forum, which offered a panel of Indigenous dance educators from Canada, Australia, Uganda, and Brazil who addressed issues and questions regarding appropriate inclusion of Indigenous dance in the curriculum. We hope to continue this discussion in the future.

We thank everyone who gave presentations and who participated in the 2022 virtual conference.

Nancy Francis and Norma Sue Fisher-Stitt
daCi Conference Co-Chairs, Canada, 2022

Attention dear members and friends,

Review on the 2024 Ljubljana conference and other important info is included in the recent newsletter posted to the members Area!

https://daci.international/welcome-to-the-members-area/member-newsletters

daCi is extremely excited to announce that donations and membership dues are now available online!
Say goodbye to the inconveniences of paperwork and postage, and hello to the convenience of quick and easy online payment!

Membership benefits:

•  Provision of the international communications and newsletter.
•  Information about the next daCi conference.
• Access to opportunities for member funding via Twinning, Outreach and Across Borders Research projects.
• International news about UNESCO and the World Alliance for Arts Education.
• Nominations and voting for the daCi Executive Committee, General Council and Country meetings.
•  Access to all online materials provided through the daCi website:
  • Use of daCi Connect to create your own profile page, share activities through group forums in an interactive platform.
  • Network with other members globally via daCi Connect to generate ideas, opportunities and future resources for dancers and educators. 
  • Access to members marketing toolkit.
  • Access to member resources comprising a collection of notable and creditable websites.
  • Access to daCi journal articles dating from the founding conference in 1978.
  • Access to the daCi archives held at the University of Surrey, UK.

There are multiple membership tiers to choose from and daCi is committed to practising equity whenever possible, so we have created membership fees calculated for country economic parity according to international data. If you have questions about your membership payment, you can contact your National Representative or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

Please note that when paying your membership online you will be prompted to create a payment account that is separate from your daCi members area login. Please keep records of both while we transition the old members site. Members in the US are still asked to pay using the daCi USA website. 

Thank you to our small team for the time that went into making this important move online possible. We look forward to expanding daCi's reach and continuing to connect dance practitioners globally for years to come! 

PAY YOUR 2025 MEMBERSHIP DUES ONLINE NOW or MAKE A DONATION

We were saddened to learn of the death of Joyce Boorman on Friday 23rd March 2024, aged 91.

Joyce was the initiator of the first ‘Dance and the Child’ conference in 1978 at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada with a program centring on the child as creator, performer and spectator. This resulted in an international gathering of concerned people from the world of children's dance and subsequently led to the formal establishment of the organisation dance and the Child international – daCi - at the Stockholm, Sweden conference in 1982. You can find more on Joyce's legacy to our conferenes by scrolling to the bottom of this conference history page. 

We heard from Joyce’s friend, Jan Vallance that, two days before she died, Joyce went with the nurse to a musical entertainment where she sang, clapped and danced with everyone, encouraging the hesitant also to join in. She will be cremated and finally laid to rest on the white cliffs of Dover near her home at Folkestone, Kent, England. 

Some daCi members knew Joyce personally, many know of her work with dance and children which inspired us all. Her important legacy lives on with us through daCi and our triennial conferences.

You can upload reminiscences of Joyce in the daCi Members Area Tribute Group or via our Facebook group in a comment. 

A full obituary will follow soon.

A major congratulations to members Anna Mansbridge and Carolyn Russell-Smith who have recently been published by Taylor & Francis in an issue of Dance Education in practice. The article, "Connecting Across Countries and Cultures", spotlights a daCi Twinning Project from the Virtual Dancing Into Communities conference and is exemplary of the cultural exchange and enrichment made possible by Twinning and other daCi initiatives.

The article describes how these two dance educators brought their students together to embody elements of eighteenth-century European court dance and Jamaican and Caribbean folk forms on a virtual platform, and to create short choreographic studies combining elements of the two dance genres. Carolyn Russell-Smith is the Artistic Director of Khulcha Theatre School of Dance in Jamaica, and she is also the daCi National Representative of Jamaica. Anna Mansbridge is the Artistic Director of Kaleidoscope Dance Company in Seattle, Washington, is a past chair of daCi USA, and is the current secretary for daCi.

Past daCi Chair Susan Koff says, "Everything in that class, with students from two different countries and many different backgrounds, embodies what daCi is all about. It was so thrilling for me to see it all in such a warm and genuine expression. Your students are really exemplary in their commitment, focus and generosity." Here is an image of the group from the artice being lead through Ann Green Gilbert's BrainDance by Anna Mansbridge.

The dancers felt "It was inspiring to do something different from what they experienced in their regular dance classes on Zoom. They gained a deeper ­awareness that movements from different cultures have histories and are not just some random ideas disseminated from teachers. They engaged with students who have a background and culture different from their own."

We hope that you will enjoy the article as an example of how Twinning can bring dancers from various backgrounds together and see how you and your dancers may get involved in a future Twinning project for the 2024 Slovenia Conference!

Details on submitting can be found by scrolling to the bottom of the 2024 conference registration page here. https://daci2024.org/registration.html