daCi 2024 Schedule

Sunday, July 7 - 4pm
Registration

Sunday, July 7 - 7pm
Opening ceremony

Monday, July 8 - Friday, July 12
Conference programme for scholars and young dancers

Wednesday, July 10
Sightseeing

Friday, July 12
Conference programme, General council meeting and Closing Ceremony (till 11 pm)


Conference Program with Abstracts / Program konference s povzetki

Conference Program

daCi 2024 Venues

  • Conference programme for scholars
    University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education, Kardeljeva ploščad 16: 
  • Conference programme for young dancers
    Art High School, Kardeljeva ploščad 28A

Other venues

  • Opening ceremony
    Kino Šiška, Trg prekomorskih brigad 3
  • Monday key speech
    Cankarjev dom Cultural and Congress centre, Prešernova cesta 10
  • Closing ceremony
    Kino Šiška, Trg prekomorskih brigad 3

Check out the daCi2024 virtual map for conference related locations.


Plenary Speakers

Eeva Anttila & Suvi Honkanen

Embodying Hope through Dance

In this presentation, we explore hope as an embodied phenomenon and illuminate how hope may be embodied, ignited and sustained through dance. We focus on hope from the perspective of sensing, of the living body, and view hope as action and affect. Affects are energies that move across human and non-human bodies, animating shared spaces. From this perspective, hope takes place in the present moment, without the need to focus on future outcomes, benefits and aims. This way, it is possible to sense meaningfulness here and now. Seeing hope as affect and action challenges the psychological view of hope as a form of human motivation connected to a desired outcome or future goal.

Understanding dance education as pedagogy of hope seems important in developing the field during these challenging times. Pedagogy of hope connects the mind and the body. It is grounded in practice and involves action. Instead of “instilling” hope in learners, it aims to evoke hope and give it guidance. Hope as action and affect defies gravity and makes it possible to sense lightness, connectedness and an animated sense of life. Dance education also has great potential in re-imagining processes related to constructing identities. Acknowledging that young people’s identities are fluid and evolve through non-binary modes allows for bending norms. Through exploring boundaries in a safe environment, young people can find new forms of embodied expressions. To illuminate these themes, our presentation also includes artistic elements. These elements shed light on the conference themes of improvisation, imagination, identity and intelligence, both from embodied and scholarly perspectives.

During these times of crises, it is important to appreciate the significance of art in igniting and sustaining hope in children. Experiencing meaningful moments here and now may ignite hope even when the future is uncertain, as it is for many children. We, dance educators and artists, also need to be animated and mobilised by hope in order to counter disengaging and immobilising forces in society. Through this, we can see that dance can be an act of love and hope.

Eeva Anttila works as a professor in dance pedagogy at Theatre Academy of University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland, and leads the MA program for dance pedagogy. Her research interests include dialogical and critical dance pedagogy, embodied learning, embodied knowledge, social justice, and equality in arts education, as well as practice-based/artistic research methods. During 2009 -13 she led a development and research project in collaboration titled “The entire school dances!” Anttila is actively involved in national and international dance and arts education organizations and journals. She served as the Chair of Dance and the Child International (2009–2012) and has published several articles and book chapters nationally and internationally. She was involved in the ARTSEQUAL -research project (2015-2021) as Arts@School team leader and Visions group member (see artsequal.fi/en). Currently she leads the ELLA -research project, funded by KONE foundation. ELLA focuses on embodied language learning through the arts. She is a founding member of Observatory of Arts and Cultural Education, Finland.

Suvi Honkanen is a versatile dancer, performer and writer. She has studied dance at Helsinki Dance Institute (Finland), Boulder Ballet School (USA), Finnish National Ballet School, and Vaganova Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg (Russia). Upon graduation in 2010 she was hired to Finnish National Ballet and continued with the company until 2019, performing in both major classical ballets and contemporary work. She has since studied creative writing, journalism, and acting both in Finland and the United States and currently works as a freelance writer, actor and dancer.

Susan Griss

Minds in Motion: Creative Movement as a Language for Learning

Because dancing is deeply encoded in human beings, young children have easy access to this form of creative expression. As teachers, we can take advantage of that, for – as John Dewey revealed – the more a child is actively involved in a learning activity, the greater the learning. That is why teaching subjects as diverse as language arts, math, history, and science through creative movement is so successful. Children can explore the diverse content of the curriculum through their own spontaneous movements, not only revealing the essence of a lesson, but also aspects of their own identity, skills, and intelligences that may be hidden to their teachers, their peers, and even to themselves. And because creative movement improvisation demands active participation and constant decision-making, students stay engaged.

Teaching through movement can help with the clarification and retention of ideas and information fostering intellectual growth while supporting a safe and inclusive environment conducive to differentiated instruction. Through the interdisciplinary approach of arts-integration, it can provide a visceral understanding of abstractions that children might otherwise not grasp.

There is an ancient Chinese saying: I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand. This is the foundation of kinesthetic teaching. By allowing students to embody the curriculum, we are acknowledging and respecting a huge part of themselves: their physical beings. This in turn nurtures their self-confidence as they take responsibility in the proactive role of learning through their bodies. As one fourth grade teacher described: “It was like putting fish back in water!” And now we know through research on learning and the brain, that movement fully supports the way children learn.

For example, students can be immersed in the nuances of a story through creative movement to better comprehend a character, theme, or meaning of a text. Punctuation can be transformed beyond insignificant dots and squiggles into whole body movements that reflect the subtle meanings, design, and proper placement of punctuation marks. Children can experience the magic of multiplication as they watch 5 children perform 3 skips simultaneously, showing 5 X 3 skips in the blink of an eye. And they can grasp the realization that sound travels fastest through solid as they reenact a relay race of sound waves traveling through gas, liquid, and solid.

And these learnings are not superficial. Hundreds of teachers have reported that their students gain a deeper understanding and retention of these and many other lessons using movement strategies. When learning is embedded in movement, learning becomes visible. And it truly awakens children to the joy of learning! 

Susan Griss is a pioneer in the field of arts-in-education. Rooted in her background as a dancer/ choreographer, her successful methods of teaching academic curriculum through movement have been presented to principals, classroom teachers, teaching artists and pre-service teachers throughout the U.S., in Denmark, Slovenia and Israel, and in India through the Fulbright Specialist Program. She is author of the book Minds in Motion: A Kinesthetic Approach to Teaching Elementary Curriculum, as well as numerous articles. Ms. Griss was a faculty member of Bank Street College of Education in NYC and taught in the graduate department of Lesley University in the Creative Arts in Learning Program. She presented workshops for the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and in New York was co-founder/co-director of BEYOND PAPER AND PENCIL: Bringing Literacy to Life through the Performing Arts, offering professional development and artist residencies in elementary schools to promote student learning through arts-in-education. 

Robi Krofič

First-Person Artistic Experience in Contemporary Pedagogical Approaches

Education through art emerged in the European context closely tied to the rise of aesthetics (Kant, Schiller) and the Enlightenment-Romantic concept of forming the Kantian subject and aesthetic taste (Kant, Schiller, Lichtwark). Phenomenology deepens the exploration of the original ancient meaning of poiesis and openness to sensory perception (aesthesis), as well as a new way of justifying the existential significance of art in education. While Enlightenment aesthetics primarily studied the artwork as a medium of specific languages, phenomenology focuses on analysing the artistic event as a dialogue between the artist, the artistic object and the art recipient, attributing crucial value to the first-person experience of both the creator and the recipient of the artwork. Gadamer defines the uniqueness of the artistic event by the playful nature of artistic representation, which is committed solely to the internal reasons of the activity itself, while also attributing to it exceptional educational power, as it determines both the manner of creating the artwork and the active response of the recipient, and thus their involvement in the dialogical play of the artistic event. The natural prototype of such a dialogical play of the artistic event is the child’s symbolic play as one of the first mediums of learning.

The significance of first-person artistic experience, emphasised particularly by poetic pedagogy (Homan), aligns with the ideas of the contemporary educational-theoretical approaches of dialogical pedagogy (Sidorkin, Matusov), relational pedagogy (Bingham, Sidorkin), pedagogy of listening (Rinaldi) and communicative autopoetic pedagogy (Luhman, Medveš), as well as the comprehensive inductive educational approach (Kroflič). Analysis of first-person artistic experience highlights the crucial role of imagination, improvisation and personal bodily engagement in the artistic event, strengthening the embodied intelligence of the participants and ensuring an inclusive environment for both artists and audience, which is characteristic of all performative arts, especially dance.

Theoretical research on the pedagogical significance of first-hand artistic experiences, as well as analysis of the introduction of arts education across the entire school vertical, indicate that dialogue with art, attentive to the experience of the educated individual, is a very rich pedagogical tool with which we should complement predominantly scientifically and technologically oriented public education. As demonstrated by the results of selected projects and UNESCO recommendations, this goal is best achieved through the interdisciplinary collaboration of kindergartens and schools with artists and cultural-artistic institutions, assuming that we recognise the child/adolescent as being (Malaguzzi) capable of expression through artistic languages.

Robi Kroflič PhD, is a full professor in the Department of Pedagogy and Andragogy at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. He specialises in general pedagogy and educational theory. His specific areas of research include theories of pedagogical authority and pedagogical eros, the promotion of prosocial and moral development of children and adolescents, inclusive education, discipline and punishment, and the study of artistic experience as a medium of education. In recent years he has formulated the concept of a comprehensive inductive approach to education, with particular emphasis on education through the arts and the creation of conditions for greater participation and emancipation of children from vulnerable social groups. An important area within this comprehensive approach is education through the arts. He has provided professional guidance in projects integrating arts education, such as Cultural Enrichment for the Youngest, Land Art, Urban Art, Graphics, Storytelling through Photography, Theatre Playground, Elementary Film School, Storytelling Festival and Fairy Tale Studio, as well as the SKUM project (Development of Communication Skills through Cultural and Artistic Education). He is also a member of the ACIIS — Academy for Creative, Innovative and Inclusive Schools project. He conducts teacher training for selected film content at the Municipal Kinodvor Art Cinema and has also contributed to the creation of the first scientific monograph on phototherapy in Slovenia.

Maja Delak & Rok Vevar

Dance Education between Personalities and Practices

In the field of contemporary dance, approaches to teaching dance have changed within educational models according to needs, but teaching methods have always been fundamentally conditioned and limited by the way in which pedagogues percieve the success of the educational process. As well as generating kinetic competences, models of dance education have given rise to modes of the human behaviour, openness to artistic practices and forms of social responsiveness (feeling for the (dance) community) of those following various educational programmes. Not least, educational programmes have always generated opportunities for artistic creativity, which, in a variety of ways and within different dance paradigms, have generated the art of dance as well as its public life. In the region of today’s Slovenia, different approaches to dance education have emerged over time, and competence in the field of dance has meant different things.

In their presentation, Rok Vevar and Maja Delak will draw on a corpus of examples to create a composition of selected concepts, a network of examples and stories that bear witness to various approaches to education, the needs of the art of dance, and the temporal and spatial environments in which dance enters into communication with its audiences. They will focus on where and how dance teaching has crossed the boundaries between learning the private, individual dance styles that are typical of the modern era, and providing kinetic and creative tools from which students and dance artists can shape diverse examples of their creative will. They will also examine how the need for dance education has changed according to the public experience of dance art.

Illustrated by photographic and written materials, their presentation will not be structured chronologically, but according to specific issues.

Maja Delak is a performer, choreographer and pedagogue. She studied contemporary dance at CNDC L’Esquisse in Angers, France, and graduated in psychology at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. She initiated the secondary school programme of contemporary dance, run by the Secondary Preschool Education, Grammar School and Performing Arts Grammar School Ljubljana, where she teaches regularly. Her choreographic poetics lie at the intersection of various themes and creative practices fed by the methodology of contemporary dance. For her work in the field of contemporary dance, she has received numerous awards. In recent years, she has collaborated with Luka Prinčič on several sound and music projects and performs with the collective The Feminalz. She is the founder and artistic director of Emanat, Institute for development and affirmation of dance and contemporary art.

Rok Vevar is a theatre scholar, writer, researcher, curator and historian of contemporary dance, who has been a multifaceted presence in the field of contemporary Slovenian performing arts for more than two decades. He is the initiator and founder of numerous festivals and initiatives, as well as the Temporary Slovenian Dance Archive (2011) and, last but not least, the author of the monograph Ksenija, Xenia: Ksenia Hribar’s London Dance Years 1960–1978, in which he focuses on the early period of the artistic career of this dancer and choreographer, who is considered one of the central figures of Slovenian contemporary dance history.

© University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Education  ·  Republic of Slovenia, Public Fund for Cultural Activities, Department of Dance