From the editor
Ken Bartlett, Director, Foundation for Community Dance
Many of us are not prepared to see the arts and culture confined to a marginal role in society, as 'just a titillating and trendy distraction from the real business of running this planet, but as a driving force behind survival, social change and sustainable development'. Helen Gould, Director of Creative Exchange argues that the principal renewable resource is human creativity and we have to connect up with the jigsaw of knowledge, data and learning resources so we can better understand the global impact of arts and culture.
In this issue of Animated, people from different countries, cultures and contexts with different artistic and intellectual traditions present their unique solutions and raise new questions as they engage with people through dance and use dance to deal with issues of human and social justice. In addition we look at some of the issues faced in bringing people from different cultures together in the dance experience.
Ruth Till, Katie MacCabe and Melanie Nix reflect on their experiences as travellers from Britain to Romania, China and Zimbabwe respectively, bringing back messages of inspiration about how dance has made real differences to people's lives, their understanding of each other and built solid international partnerships.
Dance critic Donald Hutera in conversation with Israeli born dancer and choreographer Yael Flexer draws out her views about ten years of living and making work in Britain and developing her work in education, community and for theatre audiences. Whilst United States artist-teacher Ehud Kraus and linguistic anthropologist Dr. Shirley Bryce-Heath explore what they have learned from a new US/UK initiative bringing together artists from both countries.
The last set of articles in this issue focus on the solutions being found by artists and arts organisations across the globe. These articles reveal artists working in more dramatic or extreme situations - Nicholas Rowe in Palestine being told, 'People are being killed on the streets - how can you think of dance'. Alvaro Restrapo in Colombia and Ines Sanguinetti in Argentina working to combat extreme poverty and to make dance as vital as 'food, education and employment', through extraordinary programmes of dance, education and community development.
Susanne Schneider charts the fragile development of community dance in Switzerland through the serious commitment of artists. Whilst Carol Anderson in Canada reveals the challenges being faced and the solutions being found to engage children and young people in dance with real artistic merit, appropriate to their context. Indigenous Australian artist Jeanette Fabila lets us in to the world of Indigenous people and how she is working to bridge the cultural divides in multi-cultural Australia. And Finally, Uttara Coorlawala rekindles the debate started by Andree Gau in the Autumn 2001 issue of Animated about dance and cultural identity.
As Yael Flexer says, 'certain issues keep coming back and driving me on, like migration, transience, being an outsider or on the fringe, and the delicate and sometimes uncomfortable dynamic of not being quite at home anywhere and yet feeling at home everywhere'. Animated cannot in one issue provide the completed 'jigsaw' demanded by Helen Gould however we have begun the process of putting the pieces together.
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Animated: Autumn 2002