Festival / since 2022

COLLECTIV_A festival is a one-week educational project conceived to promote dance exchange and support the growing dance community in Tbilisi, Georgia. The practices, performances, and discussions in the festival program are centered around the topics of collectivity, mutual care, and interdependency. Attempting to imagine the possibilities for resistance through collaboration, mutual support, and pleasure, we have selected contact improvisation, capoeira and its musicality, artistic research practices on pleasure, and communities to be our guides to the physical experience of commonality. The chosen disciplines and practices have one thing in common: they cannot be experienced individually, and therefore teach us to adjust to each other and learn from togetherness. With

COLLECTIV_A we drop any idea of prescribing and managing the dance space, instead we are looking for the dance as a teacher.

 

After the beginning of the war in Ukraine and with the recent mobilization, many Ukrainianand Russian artists found their way to Georgia, which was also the case for our collective that has been formed in Tbilisi. Since March, we have been facilitating various dance and improvisation classes together with building the community and community practices, creating dance performances, and organizing events.

 

Now, while we are still searching for permanent premises for our studio, we are convinced of the importance of creating an event that would not only reinforce our community but extend it and allow merging with the local context and dancers.

 

The festival is aimed to bring foreign as well as local dancers together in the situation of disorientation, displacement, and regional crisis caused by the Russian aggression in Ukraine. We strongly believe that communal dance and movement practices can promote solidarity and a sense of safety as a response to the current political and humanitarian catastrophe that made many people leave their homes, and families, as well as their work and artistic practices. For us, creating this festival is the way to find again our community, create a space for professional exchange, and claim our right to continue dancing. Furthermore, it is an excellent opportunity to promote cultural exchange in our new environment, to engage in a dialogue with the local artists, as well as to bring experienced teachers and dancers from abroad.

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Idea: Dasha Sedova

Organisation: Anna Gumeniuk, Dasha Sedova

Teachers: Alessandro Rivellino, Yusa Jacobs, Alan Dedegkaev, Ksenia Mikelova, Anna Gumeniuk, Dasha Sedova

Performers: OMM

Team: Vadim Elichev, Steffany Seitz, Salome Bakuradze, Katya Kalyuzhnaya, Anna Morozova Life music: Richard Delong, Svetlana