Photo: Michal Hančovský.
The workshops will be led by Nina Hümpel (DE), publicist and founder of the Tanznetz platform, Jonathan Gray (UK), editor-in-chief of Dancing Times magazine, and Sanjoy Roy (UK), a critic who has written about dance for Springback Magazine and other major media for over twenty years.
The workshops are aimed particularly at arts critics and editors with a focus on dance, new circus and movement theatre, but also cultural managers and those working in cultural organisations. The content will be devoted to the practice of the media and is therefore mainly intended for those involved in the management of media projects or editorial management.
The speakers will discuss issues of sustainability, fundraising, sponsorship, monetisation of content, staff stability and setting up a system of rewarding the work of critics. In addition, attention will be paid to the topic of print versus online media, the challenges and risks of transformation and the specifics of the functioning of each of these types of media. The third topic will be audience development and marketing, PR and other strategies to increase the interest of readers.
"We have managed to assemble a diverse team of lecturers who will be sharing methods proven in practice and systems of operation in other European countries with participants from different perspectives due to the different roles they play in the media industry. For example, Nina Hümpel has been leading the Tanznetz platform for 26 years. They have developed an interesting form of financing, which will be discussed at the workshop," explains project manager Lucie Štádlerová.
The workshops will conclude with an open discussion Echoes of Dance Criticism in Regional Media. In addition to the speakers, other key figures in the field of dance journalism and cultural PR will be invited to participate in the discussion panel. The debate will be hosted by Josef Bartoš, editor-in-chief of Czech Dance News.
"What we want to learn from the international guests is how the situation is in their country, whether they have similar issues with the lack of reflection of dance in the local media, and try to find out together with them what could help to increase the coverage of dance," Bartoš says about the goals of the discussion.
The whole project of Czech Dance News, o. p. s., Dance Criticism in the European Context is divided into two parts. The first series of seminars and discussions took place at the end of March and the beginning of April this year in cooperation with the Czech Dance Platform. The project is supported by the European Union through the National Recovery Plan.
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Medallions of the speakers:
Jonathan Gray (London, UK) was editor of Dancing Times from 2008 to 2022. He studied at The Royal Ballet School, Leicester Polytechnic, and Wimbledon School of Art where he graduated with a BA Hons in Theatre Design. He was on the Curatorial Staff of the Theatre Museum, London, from 1989 to 2005, assisting on a number of dance-related exhibitions, and helping with the recreation of original designs for a number of The Royal Ballet's productions including Danses concertantes, Daphnis and Chloë, and The Sleeping Beauty. He has also contributed to the Financial Times and The Guardian, written programme articles for The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, and is co-author of the book Unleashing Britain: Theatre gets real 1955-64, published in 2005.
Nina Hümpel (Munich, Germany) studied theater studies with an emphasis on dance history, and also literary studies and philosophy in Munich. Since 1996 she has been the publisher of tanznetz.de, the internet portal for artistic stage dance in German-speaking countries, for which she received the German Dance Recognition Award in 2014. She is a member of the initiative Access to Dance – Tanzplan München; with its broad network the initiative is committed to creating better access for contemporary dance in the city. To assist in accomplishing this, in 2005 she founded accesstodance.de, the dance portal for Bavaria. Nina Hümpel was a jury member of the Bayerischer Landesverband für zeitgenössischen Tanz (Bavarian State Association of Contemporary Dance); the Kultureller Ehrenpreis (cultural honor award) and the dance jury of the City of Munich's Department of Arts as well as the Fonds für Darstellende Künste (Fund for Performing Arts) in Berlin, Programm Kreativtransfer and the Deutscher Tanzpreis des Dachverband Tanz Deutschland (German dance award by the umbrella organisation dance Germany). She is a founding and board member of Tanz.Media and since 2021 has been a board member of Dachverband Tanz Deutschland (umbrella organization dance Germany).Together with Tobias Ehinger she curated the gala program for the German dance award in 2020, 2021 and 2022. She teaches dance history and dance journalism at several institutions and universities. She curated together with Dieter Buroch DANCE, the City of Munich's international festival of contemporary dance, for the first time in 2012. She was the sole artistic director for the subsequent editions of the dance biennale in the years
Sanjoy Roy (London, UK) is editor of Springback Magazine, a Europe-wide dance writing development initiative by Aerowaves Europe, launched in 2018, and has been a dance writer for the Guardian since 2002. He was previously a production editor and designer at the specialist publisher Dance Books Ltd, where he was also co-editor of the print magazine Dance Now. He has written for many other publications including the New York Times, New Statesman, Dancing Times and Dance Gazette and Dancing Times, is London correspondent for Dance International magazine, and won the 2019 OneDance UK Award for Dance Writing. He studied contemporary dance at Laban, London, as well as sociology and communication at Goldsmiths, University of London. His writing archive is at sanjoyroy.net
Josef Bartos
Thank you for your thoughts. One got stuck in my mind – that passion makes us different from AI. Just yesterday I read…I am a dance critic. I am a member of an endangered species