The Digital Teacher

"We are leaving through unimaginable tragedies, in a time that I could best describe as the posthuman era. More than ever, we need to dance with purpose, to remind the world that humanity still exists."

Gregory Vuyani Maqma

2020 is a year with even more challenges for the performing arts community all over the world.

Almost all the Centres of ITI are not able to celebrate International Dance Day with an event because of the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus. Therefore, the General Secretariat Team of ITI initiates that all the members and friends celebrate International Dance Day 2020 - online.

The invited dancer is the dancer, choreographer, actor, and dance educator Gregory Vuyani Maqma.

International Dance Day 2020 goes online

credits: ITI

https://www.iti-worldwide.org/

The intention of the creators of International Dance Day (IDD) was to inspire professionals, amateurs and aficionados of dance all over the world. It was and is a call for celebrating dance in all its possible forms – ballet, classical dance, modern dance, ethnic dance, improvised dance, experimental dance and any kind of dance.

And this intention is even more important during the time of social distancing. We need to encourage. We need to keep our passion alive. That is the reason the members and friends of dance are continuing to celebrate International Dance Day in 2020 online.

ITI is showing initiatives of encouragement and support and International Dance Day is presenting actions concerning the celebration of the Day and translations of the message.

International Dance Day 2020 goes online

credits: ITI

We have received a lot message reading videos from ITI Centre in the country’s language, and other videos to share peoples’ enthusiasm, wishes for the future theatre and all Arts perfomances.

Let’s be united in this action for the benefit of each and everybody who loves, theatre and shares our values for a culturally rich and peaceful world.

Lockdown dancing

Education:

"As we dance with our bodies, tumbling in space and tangling together, we become a force of movement weaving hearts, touching souls and providing healing that is so desperately needed."

Gregory Vuyani Maqma

Beautiful message! So inspirational to students and teachers on this day! We all have students who live difficult times in lockdown.

Dance is a fun and fresh activity to include into School curriculum. School curricula without Arts (Music, Dance, Theater) will be unfinished and insufficient. Students will have an incomplete education.

Young dancers and all students are stuck in their homes and unable to go to the dance schools and schools for classes.

This year invite your students to dance online: ballet, contemporary, tap, highland, street dance, jazz, modern dancing, via social media: YouTube, Instagram Zoom app or Facebook.

G-Souto

29.04.2020

International Dance Day goes online ! #DanceAtHome ! by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Sunday, April 29, 2018

Schools : International Dance Day : Time to dance !

International Dance Day

credit : ITI

"How to deliver this message directly to the community of humans without having a thought for all these migrant bodies, forced into exodus and exile around the world? As a choreographer and dancer, having travelled all continents to present my work and have enriching experiences in contact with others, can I look away from the chaos that shakes the world, and in particular, the migratory peril? No. I look at it and see its darkness, its brutality, but also its opportunities; the opportunities that contemporary dance has allowed me to discover in order to be part of an epoch."

Salia Sanou, Burkina Faso, Dance, or sense of the future (message, excerpt)

Every April 29 International Dance Day, also known as World Dance Day, is celebrated every year through promotion by the International Dance Council (CID).

Inlt Dance Day

credit : ITI

https://www.wikigallery.org/

Since its creation in 1982, the International Dance Committee and the International Theatre Institute ITI select an outstanding dance personality to write a message for International Dance Day each year.

This day is a celebration day for those who can see the value and importance of the art form dance, and acts as a wake-up-call for all the institutions which have not yet recognized its value to the people and to the individual and have not yet realized its potential for economic growth.

Jean-Georges Noverre

portrait by Jean-Baptiste Perronneau

The day was introduced in 1982 by the International Dance Committee of the UNESCO International Theatre Institute.

The date was chosen to commemorate the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre, who was born in 1727, a French dancer and ballet master and a great reformer of dance.

Lettres sur la Danse et sur les Ballets

Jean-Georges Noverre

Lyon 1760

https://en.wikipedia.org/

Noverre's treatise on dancing and theater expressed his aesthetic theories on the production of ballets and his method of teaching ballet.

Noverre wrote this text in London in 1756 and published it in 1760 in Lyon, France.

Every year a message from a well known dance personality is circulated throughout the world.

This year, the International Dance Day Celebration will happen at the Gran Teatro Alicia Alonso in Havana, Cuba, next Sunday, 29 April.

"The world seems to be in constant dissidence and troubles. We have witnessed, especially in recent years, incessant conflicts between countries, races and cultures. As a dance practitioner, I can’t help but wonder if art may somehow become an antidote to prevent or counteract some of the disorders that are threatening world peace and harmony."

Willy Tsao, China (message, excerpt)

5 Message Authors

Salia Sanou/Georgette Gebara/Willy Tsao/Marianela Boan/Ohad Naharin

https://www.music-opera.com/en/palais-garnier/

To celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the International Theatre Institute and "to underline the cross-cultural and international aspect of this common language - Dance", the Executive Council and the International Dance Committee of ITI have selected five message authors to write a message – one from each of the five UNESCO Regions: Africa, the Americas, Arab Countries, Asia Pacific and Europe.

"Your body begins before you and is the place of all the rituals that belong to you. When you listen to your body through dance, you also hear the bodies and dances of seduction and celebration which belong to your ancestors and your species. In your body you carry the dances that will save you."

Marinela Boan, Cuba (message, excerpt)

The five message authors are leading lights within their respective regions, are sure to offer valuable insights to the state of global dance through their messages.

They will all be present on stage to read their message on Sunday 29 April.

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker

credit: Opéra de Paris

Goals:

The goals of International Dance Day are:

To promote dance in all its forms across the world.

To make people aware of the value of dance in all its forms.

To enable the dance community to promote their work on a broad scale, so that governments and opinion leaders are aware of the value and importance of dance in all its forms and support it.

To enjoy dance in all its forms for its own sake.

To share the joy of dance with others.

Education:

"Dancing is about being in the moment. It’s about listening to the scope of sensations and allowing that listening to become the fuel of all feelings, forms, and content. Yet, we should always remember where we came from."

Ohad Naharin, Israel, message (excerpt)

Beautiful message don't you think? So inspirational to students and teachers on this day! We all have students from different countries (immigrants kids)

I wrote so often on my blog the importance of Arts - dance, music, theatre, literature/poetry or painting in school education!

Having a Master in Music and a Master in Literature I can't forget the joy of understand the importance in my life of the humanities & arts.

For too long, dance has been 'the Cinderella of the arts world' - never invested in to any great or consistent degree. No more!

Diogo Oliveira, dancer, Portugal

crédito: Estela Silva /Lusa

We have awesome young dancers among this new generation. I'm feel very proud when I read about their success in other countries or in international contests.

Diogo Oliveira, Portuguese young dancer was invited to enter at the Ecole de Danse de l'Opéra de Paris after 5 Gold Medals at international contests and best dancer at Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP, 2015).

World Dance Day is a huge opportunity to raise the level of provision of dance in schools.

"Indeed, whether we sit on the floor, hang on to a barre, fly in the air, stamp our boots on some mountain peak, whether we wave our hips lasciviously under a tent or in a nightclub, our language binds us together! For dance is not only an expression of feelings, a celebration, or just entertainment. DANCE IS A STATEMENT. A statement that says more eloquently than any spoken language, that we are ONE."

Georgette Gebara, Lebanon, message (excerpt)

G-Souto

29.04.2018

update 29.04.2024
Copyright © 2018G-Souto'sBlog, gsouto-digitalteacher.blogspot.com®

Schools : International Dance Day : Time to dance ! by G-Souto is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Monday, March 27, 2017

Schools : World Theatre Day : Go to the theater !

World Theater Day

credits: ITI

"So, here we are once more. Gathered again in Spring, 55 years since our inaugural meeting, to celebrate World Theatre Day. Just one day, 24 hours, is dedicated to celebrating theatre around the world.

(...)

Speaking here I am not myself, I am not an actress, I am just one of the many people that theatre uses as a conduit to exist, and it is my duty to be receptive to this - or, in other words, we do not make theatre exist, it is rather thanks to theatre that we exist. The theatre is very strong. It resists and survives everything, wars, censors, penury.

It is enough to say that “the stage is a naked scene from an indeterminate time” – all’s it needs is an actor.

Isabelle Huppert, message 2017

World Theatre Day

credits: Nicolas Sridi

World Theatre Day was initiated in 1961 by the International Theatre Institute (ITI). It is celebrated annually on the 27th March by ITI Centres and the international theatre community.

Various national and international theatre events are organized to mark this occasion.

One of the most important of these is the circulation of the World Theatre Day is International Message through which at the invitation of ITI, a figure of world stature shares "his or her reflections on the theme of Theatre and a Culture of Peace".

Jean Cocteau
credits: Jean Cocteau official site

The first World Theatre Day International Message was written by Jean Cocteau (France) in 1962.

Goals of WTD:

To promote theatre in all its forms across the world.

To make people aware of the value of theatre in all its forms.
To enable theatre communities to promote their work on a broad scale so that governments and opinion leaders are aware of the value and importance of dance in all its forms and support it.

To enjoy theatre in all its forms for its own sake.
To share the joy for theatre with others.

The actor of the World Theatre Day Message 2017 is the French actress Isabelle Huppert.

Isabelle Huppert

Picture is copyrighted and may be used

for World Theatre Day issues only by ITI Centres

Isabelle Huppert nominee in a Leading Role as the Oscars 2017 and winner Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama - at the Golden Globes 2017.

International performances that are part of the programmer include Allassane Sidibe, a storyteller from Togo, a performance with Zhang Jun (UNESCO Artist for peace, Kunqu opera) and an excerpt of the performance The French (based on the novel Ultimatum by Fernando Pessoa/ Álvaro de Campos, directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski (message author 2015)

World Day of Theatre for Children and Young People
http://www.assitej-international.org/

Education:

A story well-told on stage doubtless captivates the children in the audience and somehow transforms them. Leaving the theater after a show, the world seems different: it has been touched by a performance that allows members of the audience to see beyond the surface.

(...)

The tale comes to life beyond our imagination and somehow, transforms us into protagonists, because we entrust the characters with our emotions and fears, our desires and frustrations. Once they are staged, fiction, music, dance, song, poetry, games, magic, and juggling are all harmonically assembled, along with the resources typical of the theatrical arts: wardrobe, lights, scenery, makeup, props.

The contributions made to our cultural heritage –with an emphasis on literature and theater– invariably lead to children exercising their imaginations and finding greater meaning in life."

Francisco Hinojosa, message 2017, World Day Theater for Children & Young People

Pinocchio/ Tout à Trac

credits: Jérémie Battaglia

On the 27th March 2017, the schools are still working. Easter season is near, but for the moments students are at school

Theatre in education is used to encourage effective learning in schools. It calls for careful consideration of the audience's age and requirements in order to engage them and get the message across.

It complements school curriculum and illustrate the dynamic relationship between the performing arts and literature, history, science and world cultures.

Nous Sommes Mille en Équilibre Fragile

Dynamo Théâtre

credits. Pierre-Luc Schetagne

The idea of a high impact performance for a specifically targeted school audience became very popular. Because the audiences are small, students can be encouraged to participate through work in role and through debate.

Projects can be supported with resource materials and training or support for the teachers.

Ligne de Bus/ Théâtre I.N.E

credits: Eugene Holtz

Teachers may invite an actor/ actress to have a conversation with the students. And why not exciting workshops for young theater enthusiasts.

The workshops will not only provide instruction on acting and theatre, but will help students build their public speaking skills and confidence by using more nontraditional, artistic teaching methods."

Go to the theatre next the school in your city with your students! Best lesson you can share with you students about theatre.

If you are teaching at a Vocational school of Theatre, of course you will talk a lot and have special actvities to celebrate the day.

Level: All levels

Curriculum: Cross-curricular.

Ondin/ L'Illusion

Théâtre des Marionnettes

credits: Michel Pinault