SEEDS
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). Launched in 2022, SEEDS focuses on nurturing contemporary dance in Southeast Europe through three dimensions:
Empowering the next generation: SEEDS provides education and training for emerging dance artists and producers, equipping them with the skills and knowledge to thrive in the contemporary dance landscape. More specifically, The Academy for Dance and Performance, organised in Bucharest (2022-2023) enabled 11 performers and 7 emerging producers from Romania, Bulgaria, and Serbia, to develop their skills, knowledge, and experience in the contemporary dance field.
Fostering artistic collaboration: The project facilitates artistic co-production, enabling artists from all three partner countries to collaborate on innovative dance productions. After the education and training program, each partner produced a new contemporary dance piece, in which graduates from the Academy for Dance and Performance worked together with local artists from each country. Thus, the performances ”Unstable Comrades” (choreography by Igor Koruga, produced by Stanica – Service for Contemporary Dance), ”Transformability: Forever [partly musical]” (choreography by Willy Prager, produced by Brain Store Project Foundation), and ”Bodies on the Line” (choreography by Ioana Marchidan, produced by the National Centre for Dance in Bucharest), premiered in the season 2023- 2024 and are presented in 2024 in three International dance festivals: Antistatic (Sofia), Kondenz (Belgrade), and Iridescent (Bucharest).
This led to the third dimension of the project: build a regional audience. The three new pieces are disseminated and promoted by touring them in order to make them visible and accessible to a wider audience in each country, therefore building and developing a regional audience for contemporary dance. The works created through the project will tour in other international dance festivals in Europe, enabling a wider appreciation for Southeast European dance.
SEEDS fosters collaboration and exchange across borders. Through education, production, dissemination, and artistic exchange, the project connects the contemporary dance scenes of Southeast Europe, enriching the conversation around this dynamic art form.
Foreword by project partners
The National Centre for Dance Bucharest CNDB (Romania):
The SEEDS project stemmed from the success of our pilot program, the Academy for Dance and Performance. This program provided valuable insights and positive feedback from participants and the local community, fueling our ambition to go further.
SEEDS arose from the need to create a regional platform for artists and cultural practitioners. Here, they can come together, learn, research, create,
perform, and co-produce new works. The fragmented cultural infrastructure across Romania and neighbouring countries further underscores the importance of SEEDS. By fostering collaboration, we aim to bridge the gap not only between institutions and/or structures, but also between countries and their artistic communities, united by our shared artistic aspirations and challenges.
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.
Vava Ștefănescu, CNDB Manager
Station – Service for Contemporary Dance (Belgrade, Serbia):
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 Cvetković, co-founder of Station
Brain Store Project (Bulgaria):
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
SEEDS PUBLICATIONS
