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Access to Dance - Tanzplan München

Current Activities
The City of Munich has been won over by the successful project work and fund the Dance-and-School and artist-in-residence programmes over the long term. It will provide 100,000 euros per year for this in additional to 300,000 euros over three years for dance projects with young people. The Free State of Bavaria will also continue to provide 50,000 euros. The work of communicating dance and the diverse children and youth projects will continue at full steam. The work is also expanding geographically in the region and a subsidiary office is being established in Augsburg in a bid to meet the high needs and demands of educational institutions. The start-up funding provided by Tanzplan for dance studies work has led to the creation of a part-time position at the Theatre Studies Institute at Munich University. (May 2011)

Project description
"Access to Dance“ is a program designed to further contemporary dance - created and now run by an association of various Munich based dance organisations and institutions, the so called Tanzbasis e.V.

Its scope comprises studies, productions and presentations – amongst which the so called „Tanz von und für Jugendliche“ (dance for, and made by youths) - as well as communication and documentation. Furthermore, new structures are being created for undergraduate studies, continuing education, and postgraduate studies in the field of dance in universities, schools and in the artistic domain.

Both categories „studies“ and „ dance for, and made by youths“ are being pursued within the context of Tanzplan München. Their goal is to allow dance to be experienced by schoolchildren from all kinds of school and integrated into schools as part of the school system. The non-profit organisation „Dance and School“ selects, assists, and provides qualified dance educators, choreographers and dancers for work in the schools as well as qualified courses in continuing education. An additional offer in the field of continuing education can be found at „Tanzkunst in die Schule“ (dance as art in schools), an initiative that cooperates with the faculty of sports science at the TU München. A qualified expansion of undergraduate courses in dance studies, which will build bridges between theory and practice is being developed in cooperation with the theater studies department at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Furthermore, scientific monitoring of the dance classes during and after the children and teenagers’ participation in projects at their schools allows for a study of the development of their cultural literacy.

The cooperation of the Bavarian State Ballet with bavarian schools constitutes an important center of convergence which accelerates the integration of dance in bavarian schools –„ dance for, and made by youths“ provides the strcuture for pupils at St. Anna Gymnasiums and other schools to spend an entire month in a danceroom instead of a classroom while they study their own choreography to be presented at the Muffatwerk. Additionally, curricula for advanced dance pedagogues training are being developed and students of theater and dance studies are being connected with contemporary dance practice.

Among the founding members of Tanzbasis e.V. are Walter Heun (Joint Adventures), Nina Hümpel (tanznetz.de), Dr. Klaus Kieser (K. Kieser Verlag), Dietmar Lupfer (Muffatwerk), Dr. Katja Schneider (twm – LMU München), Simone Schulte (Kulturbüro Simone Schulte & Andrea Marton) and Bettina Wagner Bergelt (Bayerisches Staatsballett).
(Current as of May 2007)

Contribution by Katja Schneider in
"Jahresheft Tanzplan Deutschland 2006/07" (March 2007)
It would be possible to imagine a smoother start: Munich’s “Access to Dance” project had to overcome some hurdles before it finally got the green light in November 2006. Only then was it decided that the cooperation model could be implemented as had been planned from the outset, standing securely on the three pillars of dance production and presentation, dance teaching and dance training.

The goal of “Access to Dance“ is to create access to contemporary dance at various levels using various means and to network these strategies as strongly as possible. In the complex cooperation model of Tanzbasis e.V., founded by Walter Heun, Nina Hümpel, Klaus Kieser, Dietmar Lupfer, Katja Schneider, Simone Schulte and Bettina Wagner-Bergelt practice and theory, the practice of art, education and training, experience and reflection ‘on site’ will therefore be bundled together for the first time. What has so far been achieved by single initiatives in Munich and Bavaria can now work together in a concentrated way to create entirely new and sustainable structures.

Cultural consultants Simone Schulte & Andrea Marton planned and organised ways for dance to become an integral part of morning classes together with the Tanz und Schule e.V. association, in what was a previously neglected area in Bavaria. Their goal is to anchor dance as a natural part of cultural education in the wider public and promote the qualification of teachers. Ms Schulte, a culture manager and Ms Marton, a dance educator, have been developing and holding further training courses for dancers, choreographers and dance educators since March 2006, also sending them to schools as teachers. So far there are around 25 projects throughout Bavaria, lasting from six weeks to twelve months. Tanz und Schule e.V. selects the teachers – there are currently 20 project managers and ten assistants – and finances regular further training for them. This year there will be workshop modules from TanzMedizin Deutschland e.V. on Laban basics and Forsythe’s Improvisation Technologies, among others. In September 2007 there was a project with former Forsythe dancer Ana Catalina Román in which a performance was developed in an intensive week with pupils, after which an internal training course showed educators how to run just such a school project.

In the long term the plan is to incorporate and certify these qualification modules into a curriculum. Part of this – in cooperation with the Schulte & Marton cultural consultancy, Tanz und Schule e.V. and various faculties of the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität Munich – will also be a series of open lectures that will highlight knowledge about dance and its relation to different disciplines.

These training courses will be held in close cooperation with the Bavarian State Ballet, which also provides the premises for the Tanz und Schule initiative. The large Munich company – which has already been actively working with children and young people for two years through the programmes “Erlebnis Ballett” and “THEATerleben” – has also integrated workshop discussions and visits to theatres into the work of Tanz und Schule. Dramatic consultant and Deputy Director of the Ballet Bettina Wagner-Bergelt, also a founding member of Tanzbasis e.V., is responsible for the State Ballet’s Education Programme. For her, such commitment is essential. “As an artist, you cannot withdraw. We make art, nothing else. But we have to make sure that there will still be an audience in future, an educated and aware audience. This especially means working artistically with children, who will live in a society that will have increasing amounts of free time that they should use constructively. We have to bring work of quality into the competition.“

Together with Munich’s St. Anna Gymnasium (Secondary College) and Tanz und Schule e.V., the Bavarian State Ballet launched the “anna tanzt” project. In July, during the last four weeks of school before the long holidays, all eight classes from the same year have their dance lessons in the studio instead of in the school. Working with a choreographer, her assistants, and some pupils from another type of school, she will there develop a piece right up to its presentation on stage. In July 2006 Ana Catalina Román was in charge of “anna tanzt” and showed the artistic result in the Münchner Reithalle. In 2007 Nadja Raszewski from Berlin was responsible for the around 100 young people and performed with them at the end of July in the Muffathalle.

Tanz und Schule and the Bavarian State Ballet are also networked with another institution: Theaterwissenschaft München (Theatre Studies Munich) (twm) at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität. In addition to a training that has been extended to include dance science, courses focus on contact with artistic practice, closely based on current repertoire in Munich and Munich institutions. During the current petipa season of the State Ballet for example, there was a seminar dealing with the problems of transmitting and re-staging the classics, in the course of which those in positions of responsibility at the theatre were surveyed in extensive interviews. In this context, the young dance scientists, who now give audience introductions or lectures at the State Ballet, are also gaining their first practical experience. At the same time, Tanzwissenschaft in Munich is responsible for continuous scientific monitoring and documentation of Tanz und Schule projects. Here it is networked with a working group from the Bundesverband Tanz in Schulen (National Association of Dance in Schools), which develops and trials evaluation models.

The "studies" area of “Access to Dance“, which links schools and university, has been funded by Tanzplan Deutschland since January 2006, as has the establishment of dance as a school subject and the work described above of renowned choreographers with students and with their trainees. The overall "Access to Dance" Tanzbasis project is however more comprehensive and can only be implemented to its full extent with the outstanding support of the Munich city authorities and the Free State of Bavaria. With the help of this funding, the project areas “Production and Presentation” and “Communication/Documentation”, which are closely related to the “Studies” area, was also started in autumn 2006. This is shown in the logo of “Access to Dance”, which consists of interlinked circles of various sizes that are graduated in colour. “A structure of cells”, explained Dietmar Lupfer, “enabling new initiatives and ideas to connect with them.”