27 May-18 June 2023 Residency in Tbilisi, Georgia. Topic: AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT
Dancing Again Together was a unique experience for our whole team. First of all, it brought together representatives from different countries such as Italy, Poland, Croatia and Georgia, with different cultural and social backgrounds.
From the very beginning we had in mind to create special tasks for the participants: many different things to choose, introducing local communities and culture, giving theoretical presentations etc.
We aimed at making emotional and impressionable visits to the countryside, meeting with local artists, activists, presenting our cases. And all of this must be like a special inspiration for their future creation, as their artistic feedback on what they see and feel from this residency, from the people with whom they meet or work with.
From the very beginning, the first meeting with one of the bishops who runs an animation festival, an art school, a shadow theatre and many other initiatives on the border of the territory, which is still occupied by Russia, was the starting point for defining the values we wanted to share with our participants.
We visited three different regions, with three different communities, ethnic groups, religious beliefs, but all artists and activists who want to bring about change in their societies through art and culture.
We start an inspiring and difficult journey together with our participants, very intense, exhausting 21 days of like 24 hour connections, through workshops, meetings, sometimes big communal meals with inspired conversations, individual meetings to find out more about each other and many others.
It was a way to create an artistic community of 12 individuals together with local volunteers, to build friendship and a potential bridge for future collaboration and exchange, a residency that tore into the meeting point of artistic individuals willing to express themselves through passion and creation, through creating teams, supporting each other.
All the adventures come together in the evenings of the festival as a special programme of DTA presentations, showing inspirations through productions. 12 artists from the residency programme + local Georgian volunteers presented 5 beautiful pieces: solos, duets, group works, with original music, granted by the local collaborators, sharing with us a lot of feelings through their stories, stories of strength, memories and dreams.
All these 21 days were a great opportunity to learn a lot from each other, to go through a lot of difficulties and at the end to learn more about how we can all trust each other to create a team, an artistic team that can create individually and together, not being afraid to share thoughts and ideas with each other.
We started with a formal meeting to introduce the programme and rules to each other and ended the last day with a special meal at home to show how close we become during this journey. We went through the difficulties of misunderstandings between people, but in the end we found common languages. Nobody is perfect, but we all try to build common understanding and be happy.
We found how important it is to keep the values and measure to follow each individual in this dream, but at the same time to introduce your human environment as communities where you live, our residency became a platform for people to open mind for each other, showing how different people can dedicate themselves to serve the community through artistic creation.
I believe that they have gained experience in teamwork and I followed and saw at the final meeting in Warsaw how happy they were to continue working together, supporting each other and being happy about their joint creations.
By Levan Khetaguri,
Coordinator of the residency in Georgia, organised by the Arts Research Institute of Georgia
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