Contredanse is a documentation center for

contemporary dance Contemporary dance is a genre of dance performance that developed during the mid-twentieth century and has since grown to become one of the dominant genres for formally trained dancers throughout the world, with particularly strong popularity in ...

funded by the

French Community of Belgium In Belgium, the French Community (french: Communauté française; ) refers to one of the three constituent constitutional linguistic communities. Since 2011, the French Community has used the name Wallonia-Brussels Federation (french: Féd� ...

and is located in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

. It provides choreographers and dancers with tools and resources to connect their studio practice with academic inquiry by providing documentation about the philosophy of movement, body, composition and a history of the discipline. Their services include providing information about the sector, trainings, publishing and documentation. The name of the organisation alludes to

country dance A country dance is any of a very large number of social dances of a type that originated in the British Isles; it is the repeated execution of a predefined sequence of figures, carefully designed to fit a fixed length of music, performed by a ...

or ''contradance'' which gave rise to the first

dance notation Dance notation is the symbolic representation of human dance movement and form, using methods such as graphic symbols and figures, path mapping, numerical systems, and letter and word notations. Several dance notation systems have been invented ...

system which in turn inspired the notation system which remained the standard until the mid-19th century.

History

Contredanse was founded in 1984 by dancer and choreographer Patricia Kuypers in order to support and stimulate choreographic activity and bring Brussels-based dancers in contact with big names in the international dance scene. The Dance Documentation Center was founded by Claire Destrée in 1985. In 1990 Contredance launched their review ''Nouvelles de Danse'' as a resource for dancers to link theory to their studio practice. Since 1997 Contredance publishes an independent news publication in order to reserve the review for innovative thinking.

Communication, training and events

Contredanse informs the dance scene with regard to auditions, festivals and trainings in the French-speaking community as well as internationally. Contredanse hosts master classes and covers topics such as composition, somatic techniques, (contact) improvisation and new technologies, etc. In the past Contredanse already hosted Susanne Linke, Trisha Brown, Dana Reitz, Jennifer Tipton, Barre Phillips, Josef Nadj, Julyen Hamilton, Katie Duck, Simone Forti, Susan Buirge, Nancy Stark Smith, Lisa Nelson, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Mark Coniglio, Dawn Stopiello, Steve Paxton, and others. Additionally they host performances, exhibitions, seminars, round tables, conferences and book launches.

Dance Documentation Center

Their archive, the ''Dance Documentation Center'' is open to the public and collects content related to choreography and ideas, practice and philosophy concerning contemporary dance. Their collections include books, articles, reviews, programmes, press articles as well as photos and audiovisual material.

Publications

* ''Nouvelles de Danse news review'' published every three months. It communicates performances scheduled in Belgium, new dance works, choreography projects and topical debates.{{cite web, url=http://www.revues.be/nouvelles-de-danse, title=NDD L'actualité de la danse - Revues.be, first=Alain, last=Esterzon, website=www.revues.be

External links

Website

Dance Documentation Center

References

Dance in Belgium Organisations based in Brussels