danceWEB Scholarship Supports Blanca Gomez at ImPulsTanz in Vienna

The foundation has chosen Blanca Gomez from a long list of candidates requesting support to participate in ImPulsTanz, Vienna. For one month, supported by a danceWEB scholarship, Blanca will attend workshops, watch productions and have the chance to network among industry professionals from all around the world. We’ll hear from her in our next quarterly newsletter.

Information on ImPulsTanz: www.impulstanz.com/en

On danceWEB: Founded in 1996, the danceWEB International Scholarship Programme has long been an example of an internationally co-financed programme. The Vienna festival’s international orientation provides an ideal platform for up-and-coming artists as well as interpreters and enables the sharing of ideas with teachers and choreographers to establish a network. In addition, the participants are mentored by internationally renowned artists from the dance and performance scene.

More on danceWEB: danceweb.eu

Blanca Gómez Terán – Report-From-the-Field, ImPulsTanz, Vienna

In our July newsletter, we introduced Blanca Gómez Terán as the recipient of a danceWEB scholarship to attend ImPulsTanz in Vienna. Her report offers a thoughtful account of the experience. Here are some highlights:

“For six weeks, Vienna became an extraordinary environment in which to dance, watch, think, meet people, research, discuss and simply be surrounded by contemporary dance. The intensity of the programme was, at times, challenging, but it was also precisely what made the experience so valuable. Behind the apparent ease of the programme, I became increasingly aware of the huge amount of work required to make an experience of this scale function so well. DanceWEB helped me realise that an artistic career does not necessarily have to be built individually. It can also grow through communities, exchanges, collaborations and networks of mutual support. What I found especially valuable was the enormous variety of approaches I encountered. I was able to move between very different physical, conceptual and pedagogical methodologies, and to take from each one something that I can continue developing within my own practice. This was especially meaningful to me because, beyond the exercises themselves, I was able to observe how a choreographer and teacher creates the conditions for artistic research to happen. Throughout the programme, I was not only collecting material for myself as a dancer and maker; I was also collecting tools for transmitting knowledge, structuring a workshop and creating spaces in which other people can search. I know that this experience will return in my own choreographic work, particularly in the way I think about time, endurance and transformation. Overall, I feel that I am returning from Vienna with a considerably larger toolbox. Being able to see 35 performances in six weeks was an extraordinary privilege. These performances are not simply references that I am taking home with me. DanceWEB gave me much more than access to workshops and performances. I am deeply grateful to the Tanja Liedtke Foundation for making it possible for me to be there. Without this support, this experience would not have been accessible to me, and I am very aware of the impact that this opportunity can have on the next steps of my career.”