When: August 2008
Where: Tokyo and Kyoto

How can dance trans­form the lives of people liv­ing in the city? What is the role of artists and art insti­tu­tions to provide the dance exper­i­ence for every­one regard­less of their back­ground? What sort of cul­tural infra­struc­ture is needed to sup­port the initiative?

These are the ques­tions we asked at the 4-day sym­po­sia on com­munity dance held in Tokyo and Kyoto in August 2008.  The sym­posium provided the plat­form where four UK dance spe­cial­ists from Arts Coun­cil Eng­land, Sadler’s Wells and Found­a­tion for Com­munity Dance presen­ted UK’s com­munity dance prac­tices and dis­cussed shared issues with the Japan­ese dan­cers, cho­reo­graph­ers, arts man­agers, school teach­ers, and people from wel­fare and busi­ness sectors.

As a res­ult of the sym­posium a new net­work to sup­port com­munity dance activ­it­ies is being set up by the Japan­ese part­ners. The impacts of the sym­posium also reached to senior policy makers includ­ing the Cab­inet office of the Japan­ese Government.

To fol­low up to the sym­posium, the Brit­ish Dance Com­pany, Stop­Gap, will tour to Japan to run work­shops and show­case their work in Toy­ama, Fukuoka, Oita and Tokyo in Feb/March 2009.

Organ­ised by the Brit­ish Coun­cil Japan and NPO Japan Con­tem­por­ary Dance Network

Con­tact: Man­ami [dot] Yuasa [at] brit­ish­coun­cil [dot] or [dot] jp