Dance Futures: First meeting of the steering group

Dance is more a vocation than a profession. But the dancing career is intensive, insecure and short.  

Dancers are a highly committed group of performers. They dedicate themselves to their careers with a devotion and single-mindedness that often leaves little room for other consideration. They would have been training and performing from a young age and often would have given little thought to their working future after they can no longer perform. As very mobile performers, their careers will take them through a range of countries and systems, making it hard to build continuity and entitlement in terms of social security and making them more vulnerable. Due to the physically demanding nature of their work, dancers are also particularly vulnerable to injuries.

It’s because of all those specificities that FIA decided to apply for a project funding from the European Commission to run a project focusing on dancers. This project is called “Dance Futures: Creating Transition Schemes for Dancers and Promoting Sustainable Mobility in the Dance Sector”. Led by FIA, as European social partner organisation, with the support of IOTPD (International Organisation for the Transition of Professional Dancers), this project has the dual aim of offering better and more comprehensive support to dancers in the context of mobility, with a view to offering better information and protection in relation to the range of challenges they face; and of driving forward the creation of professional transition schemes for dancers in three selected countries, where there is a will and interest in developing such schemes.

With a view to achieving the first objective, FIA will entirely overhaul and relaunch the EuroFIA dance passport scheme to ensure that it becomes an effective scheme which can be a reliable and ready source of support to dancers in the context of mobility. This scheme aims to ensure that dancers, who are paid-up union members in their home country, can access local union support services while travelling in any country where there is a participating union. European unions representing dancers will be invited to renew their commitment to the scheme and to re-imagine its use and format to bring it up to date with technological change by developing a Smartphone application.

The second objective of driving forward the establishment of transition schemes in Belgium, Hungary and Spain will be achieved though the organisation of working seminars – one per country – with all relevant stakeholders, as well as external international support and expertise. Each of these seminars will provide an opportunity to agree on a roadmap towards the establishment of these schemes.

The first meeting of the steering group took place on December 8^th 2016. During this very constructive meeting the group discussed the renewal of the dance passport and the details of the first seminar on transition that will take place in Brussels, Belgium, on the 22nd and 23rd of March 2017.

Do not hesitate to contact us if you want to take part to this project.