News

WEBSITE LINK: https://daci2024.org/theme.html

We are very pleased to announce the next conference in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana. You are welcome from July 7 to 12, 2024 in one of the smallest European capitals, a university city, a green capital of culture, arts and festivals. The conference is supported by the Faculty of Education of the University of Ljubljana and the Republic of Slovenia Public Fund for Cultural Activities, Department of Dance.

In line with the goals of daCi and the philosophy of the daCI conference, the conference will focus on young people's learning through the movement of the dancing body. The conference in Ljubljana will focus on creative dance and promote the I - imagination, improvisation, inclusion, identity, intelligence and interdisciplinarity in dance. Visit the website for a full curatorial statement: https://daci2024.org/theme.html

Hosted by Vesna Geršak, Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana and Nina Meško, RS Public Fund for Cultural Activities, Department of Dance. Watch their welcome video and the full conference trailer below! Visit the webiste here: https://daci2024.org/theme.html

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THIS CONFERENCE HERE: https://daci2024.org/theme.html

daCi is extremely concerned about the impact of the invasion on civil society in Ukraine.

daCi calls for immediate restraint from attacks on, or harm to, children, teachers, education personnel or schools, and for the right to education to be upheld.

daCi joins the global dance community in rallying around those young dancers, researchers and educators who have been displaced by Russia's illegal aggression. 

The international dance community is a collective one and we honor every dancer who has used their art as a form of resistance and means of amplifying the vibrancy and autonomy of Ukrainian culture.

We invite you to begin or renew your daCi membership this month.

Despite the ongoing impact of the global pandemic, daCi and our global community found ways to remain connected in 2021. We presented a virtual series of special events in the first half of the year and enjoyed localised activities in various countries throughout the year.

In 2022 we are excited to be delivering our first-ever virtual conference hosted by daCi Canada - Dancing into Communities. As a daCi member, you will receive a special discount on registrations for this event.

daCi membership also allows you exclusive access to our interactive website Members' Area where we encourage you to share, engage and inspire one another in our social networking platform daCi Connect and twice-yearly daCi newsletters to catch up on activities around the world.

Join or renew your membership today to enjoy all this and more!

Farewelling Branka Petričević
by Jasmina Zagrajski Vukelić on behalf of all daci Croatia members

Our respected member and daCi Croatia co-founder Branka Petričević, passed away on December 7th.She was the Croatia representative (and ex Jugoslavia) in daCi International since its foundation in Canada.Branka spent her entire working life as a dance teacher at the Zagreb Youth Theatre.She also actively participated in daCi Conferences in Edmonton, London, Dartford, Worchester, Leuven, Stockholm, Salt Lake City, Bedford, Eindhoven, Kuopio, Lisabon, Regina, San Salvador, Den Haag.She remained daCi Croatia honorary president until her death.We all will remember her for her great enthusiasm in promoting daCi goals, kindness and nobility.

Farewelling Marion Goughby
by Jeff Meiners

Sadly, British dance educator Marion Gough passed away on September 6th 2021, leaving husband Bob, daughters Amanda, Vicky and their families.Marion was an early member of daCi UK and spent her life dedicated to dance as an inspirational educator teaching at Laban London and in Europe, publishing two books In touch with dance and Knowing Dance: A Guide to Creative Teaching.She left her position at Laban aged 60 and was sought after for freelance opportunities, working with dance companies, leading a professional development course for community dance practitioners alongside teaching and examining courses overseas.In 2018 Marion received the Dance UK Award for Lifetime Achievement in Dance Education and Learning.I remember Marion fondly as a profoundly kind colleague, friend and humanist. She will be remembered by those whose lives she touched and changed with a philosophy deeply grounded in a rigorous teaching practice that empowered learners through dance. daCi sends sincere condolences to Marion’s family

daCi members Alba Pedreira Vieira, dance professor at Federal University of Viçosa, Brasil and Valéria Maria Chaves de Figueiredo, dance professor at Federal University of Goiás, Brasil pay tribute to Paulo Freire in our latest newslettter.

This year we celebrate the centenary of Paulo Freire (19 September 1921 – 2 May 1997), a philosopher and educator whose thoughts and proposals in education, in general, have changed our approach to dance through emancipatory pedagogy. His ideas, discussed in many books and papers, on freedom, collaborative and community oriented curriculum, critical awareness, democratization of access to quality education and social justice have contributed to his progressive perspective, a point of view that favors the autonomy of the students (1998). For him, a praxis oriented by ethics and aesthetics favors decency and affectivity to walk hand in hand in the educational journey. As dancers, we may also want to build on Freire’s notion of cognitive critical thinking to one of ‘entire being thinking’ or ‘thought-full being’ (Vieira, 2007).

As Brazilians, dance artists and educators, we invite our daCi colleagues around the world to also celebrate Dance as a great possibility to promote embodied dialogues that foster children and young peoples’ imagination and trust to building together a better world. Expanding his ideas on the need for a pedagogy of deep listening, let´s celebrate Freire’s important legacy by improvising together an anticolonial dance performance, oriented by our “responsibility of recreating ourselves in society” (Shor & Freire, 1987, p. 77)

Let´s create together new movements and gestures embodying the challenge of understanding and respecting each other, human and non human bodies, as well as living together in this so diverse and complex dancing planet called Earth.

At this moment of joy for Freire´s centenary, we also face a big challenge: the COVID-19 and its variants. His words from the book Pedagogy of Hope, encourage us at these difficult moments: Cultivate your own and your students’ dreams and curiosity in the educational process; embrace movement, change and the unpredicability inherent to life (and to dance). From Freire´s dialogical pedagogy, we hope “embodied dance education may continuously come to life as a transformative experience of being, making and doing […] of being aware of our incompleteness. Transformative dance is embodiment of one’s conscious inter-subjective intentionality, which embraces inner and outer life with love, joy and hope” (Vieira, 2007, p. 236).

Referências

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: The Seabury Press.Freire, P. (1973). Education for critical consciousness. New York: The Seabury Press.Freire, P. (1998). Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy and civic courage. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.Freire, P. (2002). Pedagogy of hope. New York: Continuum.Shor, I., & Freire, P. (1987). What is the “Dialogical Method” of Teaching? Journal of Education,169(3), 11–31.Vieira, A. P. (2007). The nature of pedagogical quality in higher dance education. Tese (PhD. em Dança). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Philadelphia. Recuperado em 05 de dezembro de 2021 de https://www.academia.edu/28287828/The_Nature_of_Pedagogical_Quality_in_Higher_Dance_Education