EDNext theme 2023: Equity

Equity means enabling everyone to succeed on an equal basis, despite differences in backgrounds and resources. Looking ahead into the EDNext 2023 theme "Equity", EDN and The Ice Hot Nordic Dance Platform organise a seminar with invited artists, producers and artistic directors who will reflect on burning questions around equity. We reached out to guests of the Ice Hot to share how they build structures and use tools to better ensure equity as well as raising awareness of where it is urgent to improve the situation. 

What are we doing and what are we missing? How do you achieve equality in your organisation? How can your dance production be more diverse and inclusive? Which inequalities often go unnoticed in our everyday work practice? What does equity in dance production processes look like and how can we work towards it? 

Guest speakers

Christina Elliot (she/her) is Senior Producer at The Place, a leading centre for dance in the UK. She oversees the planning and delivery of programmes for artists and audiences, including the programming of The Place’s 288 seat studio theatre, a commissioning programme which supports over 40 projects per year and a new producing & touring programme which takes dance to spaces as varied as village halls, playgrounds, theatres and outdoor festivals across the UK and internationally. Prior to working at The Place, Christina was a producer at independent producing organisation Fuel. 

Veera Suvalo Grimberg is the founder and Artistic Director of Danskompaniet Spinn since 2010, but also a curious choreographer with an interest in forklifts, excavators and dancing firefighters. A self-willed artist of Finnish origin who wants to challenge stereotypes of what dance is and can be. Spinn is a professional dance company with dancers with and without disabilities based in Gothenburg, Sweden

Destiny Johanna af Kleen is a dancer and choreographer from the county of Gävleborg in Sweden. She also runs the non-profit organisation PHIDR which is establishing a stage and production space for dance in the middle of rural Sweden- DansPlats Skog. As a choreographer she has worked all over the world making dance art for mostly young audiences about relations and life. Her work has been described as “reality seen through imagination goggles” and like “ a G-rated Quentin Tarantino movie” Destiny is a dancewarrior with one foot as an artist and one foot as a driven spokesperson for art, bodypolitics and development of Sweden's countryside. In august she premieres her work "Dancing with horses" that is a piece made for 7 horses and 7 humans.

Àngels Margarit has dedicated her career to the world of dance, as a choreographer, dancer and teacher. In 1985 she formed the company Àngels Margarit / cia. MUDANCES, developed in different fields and formats as well as partnerships with other artists such as Joan Saura, María Muñoz, Núria Font, Andrés Corchero, Agustí Fernández and Thomas Hauert. During her career she has won numerous awards and recently she was recognised from the Ministry of culture from France with the insigne de Chevalière des Arts et des Lettres. She has developed teaching programmes for various institutions and amongst many positions she was director of the Higher Conservatory of Dance (CSD) at the Institut del teatre de Barcelona. As a curator, she conceptualized and managed the programming and artistic direction of Tensdansa, the international dance festival held in Terrassa (Barcelona) from 2003 to 2007. In 2017, her project for the management of Barcelona’s Mercat de les Flors dancehouse was selected by public tender and she has temporarily abandoned dance creation to manage this centre fulltime during the 2017-23 period.

Jarkko Partanen is Helsinki based choreographer and curator. He is a member of the W A U H A U S - arts collective. He has been working between different genres of art and varying contexts ranging from small black box theatres to urban sites, large stadiums, and the main stages of established theatre houses. Partanen is one of the founders of Wonderlust, a festival of conscious and diverse sexuality. In the context of the festival his work has turned towards more sexpositive practices and to the questions of desire and consent. Currently he is also studying in a master program in curating and exhibition studies at the University of the Arts / Fine Arts Academy in Helsinki.

Jane Gabriels, Ph.D. is a performer, writer, curator/producer. She supports artists and non-profits through Pepatián: Bronx Arts ColLABorative. Her dissertation (Concordia University, Montréal) focused on artists, creative processes, curation, and non-profits in the Bronx, NY, her professional and artistic home for over 20 years. This dissertation led to an ongoing collaboration with Thomas F. DeFrantz to produce Configurations in Motion: Performance curation and communities of color in the US and Canada. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Performance Studies at Simon Fraser University, and at the Institute of Dance Scholarship at Temple University. She contributed and co-edited Curating Live Arts: Critical perspectives, essays, and conversations on theory and practice (Berghahn Books, 2018), and booklet: Essays from Configurations in Montreal: Performance curation and communities of colour (published by Duke University and Concordia University, 2018), and contributed an essay about the work of dance maker Merián Soto published in Latina Outsiders (Routledge Press, 2019). Her writing “Fellowship: A Response from a Circle of Cedars” is included in the online Imagined Theatres Issue #4: Curating Performance and her work is part of the Familias: Dancing Community research website.

How to join?

The event took place live on Friday, July 1, 2022 between 13:30-14:30 PM (Helsinki time) at the Theatre Museum, Helsinki. The event was part of the Ice Hot Nordic Dance Platform programme. 

Join us online via livestream.

Please note the possible Covid-19 restrictions might be in place and make sure you follow the protocols presented by the organizer.