Peer-reviewed proceedings of scientific and professional contributions on dance
Summary
This year, at the 12th international conference All About People, the Alma Mater Europaea Dance Academy organised its own dance section for the fifth time. The section was entitled Dance between tradition and innovation. The dance section ran in two slots and therefore had two moderators: myself and my colleague, Assistant Professor Rosana Hribar, head of the Department of Contemporary Dance at our academy.
In the first part of the dance section we explored dance and digital technology, a theme addressed at the previous conferences in 2021 and 2022, and extended our inquiry to AI as well as to dance and dance education between tradition and innovation. In the second part we discussed contemporary dance and flamenco, exploring the relationship between dance as art and as culture.
We opened the session with our distinguished guest and invited speaker Dr Alice Siu, senior research scholar at Stanford University and associate director of Stanford’s Deliberative Democracy Lab, who, together with Ms Tatjana Christelbauer, founder and director of the Agency for Cultural Diplomacy in Vienna, presented the theme: Coppélia’s Book: Deliberation, Truth, Trust & Hope. The presentation sought to explore the complex relationship between tradition and innovation in the art of dance, supported by the transformative capacities of AI tools, with an emphasis on ethical aspects.
She was followed by Dr Simona Noja-Nebyla with the presentation Classical ballet as a system of systems, which can also be found in this volume. Drawing on her extensive experience as a ballerina, teacher, ballet school principal and researcher, she examined the intricate interweaving of tradition and innovation in ballet education against the background of the 21st century, stressing the need to redefine the purpose of ballet education.
The last two speakers in the first part were our current master’s student Ana Germ, who presented her contribution entitled Challenges of ballet education in the 21st century, published in this volume, and our former student Jerneja Omahen Razpotnik, MSc, who presented her text entitled Important educational aspects in the teaching and learning of dance as an art. The contribution sought to shed light on the role of dance in education, on how and why it is placed within the system as we see it today, and on the role of dance as an art in the general education of children and young people.
In the second part of the dance section, papers on contemporary dance and flamenco were presented by several authors. The first presentation was given by our former BA student Johanna Rebecca Greiner, entitled Forming an Individual Path with Traces of Contemporary Dance, published in this volume, as was the presentation of the second speaker, Juan Carlos Lerida, doctoral candidate at the Institut del Teatre Barcelona, entitled Flamenco Dance Improvisation: An Expanded Perspective. Two further speakers presented their work: Ana Pandur, lecturer at the Alma Mater Europaea Dance Academy, presented The Evolution of the Universal Body of Flamenco, and María de los Ángeles Cenizo Salvago, dance teacher, presented her contribution entitled Contemporaneity in Flamenko Dance.
As editor of this edition I have selected five contributions for publication in this year’s proceedings.
Prof. Dr Svebor Sečak, Dean of the Alma Mater Europaea Dance Academy