The International Federation of Actors (FIA) is running a project on career transition schemes for dancers in Europe with the financial support of the European Commission and in cooperation with the International Organization for the Transition of Professional Dancers (IOTPD). The project aims at gaining a better understanding of the career trajectories of dancers in Europe and of how transition schemes could maximise these. It also seeks to highlight which are the key elements for a successful transition scheme and how these can be built in to existing training and life-long learning schemes.
One major event in the running of this FIA project was the organisation of a final conference on the issue of career transition of dancers. It was held in Berlin on the 26th of June, 2011. It not only consisted of presentations of several initiatives in the field of career transition for dancers, but also of two panel discussions which allowed participants to actively debate with the conference’s guest speakers and generate a rich discussion.
Presentations of different programmes allowed participants to discover the variety of existing schemes and players when dealing with career transition of dancers but also to reflect on the role that trade unions can play in accompanying dancers through this singular and difficult professional step. The three presented schemes were: the “Dutch Retraining Programme for Dancers” (NL), “What NXT? – Career Support for Professional Dancers” (BE) and the “French Ministry of Culture Transition Fund” (FR).
Both panel discussions gathered speakers from different fields and horizons, enabling the topic of career transition for dancers to be looked at from a variety of angles, thus offering participants the opportunity to grasp the complexity of this issue. The themes of the panels were: “How to develop, maintain and extend Transition Schemes and ensure transferability of rights?” and “What partnerships and funding for Transition Schemes around Europe?”.
The conference was kindly hosted by our German affiliate Ver.di and gathered national and European politicians, coordinators from national transition schemes, professionals from the dance sector (schools, companies, pedagogues, current and former dancers), trade unions, employers’ organisations, EU mobility experts, etc.
You can download the programme of the conference in three languages below. To find out more about the project’s findings, go to our Project section and keep on eye on our Publications section, in which the final report on career transition programmes for professional dancers will be published during the fourth quarter of 2011. If you have questions on this promising project please contact the secretariat of FIA.
This project is financially supported by the European Commission