DAS Choreography 3.36

Dance artists who have established a professional practice and seek possibilities for further reflection and development, can increase their research skills at DAS Choreography (previous: the Amsterdam Master of Choreography - AMCh). This two-year non-residential programme of Higher Professional Education of the Amsterdam University of the Arts aims to contribute to the field of critical and contemporary dance research and creation in the Netherlands and abroad.

The course provides the support structure and organization to facilitate choreographic and interdisciplinary practice-led research, with an emphasis on the processes of praxis, or metapractice.

The individual artistic practice is the point of departure of the programme and will be the guiding thread of the course design.

The programme will allow to develop an intensive and sustained dialogue and to work in and off a continuing artistic practice. It offers a place in the words of graduates: “to slow down the chaos”,” to allow for being overwhelmed and not know”, “to allow time for insisting on one thing”. A place to create conditions for generating artistic practices.

This is realised through a commitment to a sustained dialogue for a period of two years, actually 2.5, right from the selection interviews. From the very beginning each participant is asked to actively take the lead in designing ways to present the research projects and questions to colleagues.

The programme invests in maintaining a high quality exchange of questioning artistic practice and research, made possible through the small size, concentrated and intense quality of exchange. A seminar works as a ‘pressure cooker’, by creating shared mind in the room in which understandings about artistic processes can be brought to another level. Often resonating long after the two weeks are over. This resonance will most often come to expression in the written reports and essays that are produced every semester.

Through shared reading sessions a high level of critical analysis and broadening of frames of reference is stimulated. This is done both in the seminars as in monthly Skype conference calls.

The programme can rely on a high level of entrance of choreographers who have already developed specific views on art and dance, and consequently on strong collegial exchange.