Contemporary Dance Network Philippines

Every year, the world celebrates International Dance Day, to bring everyone together in peace and friendship through a common language – dance. Each Dance Day is an opportunity to acknowledge the power of dance in our lives.

In this year’s celebration we are enjoined to take a step back and celebrate in “open spaces: streets, squares, parks, stadiums, beaches, parking lots, clearings – anywhere under the sky.” Throughout the year, “we teach dance, we rehearse, we perform within four walls.” But “on this special day dedicated to dance, [let us] we mark the difference by practising, teaching or performing for everyone to see. It might be cold and rainy, the floor is certainly not good enough, and the wind takes the music away, but the beauty in those movements and the joy on those faces will brighten the hearts of the spontaneous audience of passers-by.” (from the circular by International Dance Council, CID, UNESCO, Paris)

Annually since 2005, Contemporary Dance Network Philippines (CDNP) celebrates International Dance Day (IDD) through its Contemporary Dance Map Series. Responding to the call to perform in open spaces for IDD, CDNP performs“Hijack Dance … define dance” on April 29, 2011, 5pm at the Araneta Center, on the sidewalk across Shopwise, Gen. Aguinaldo Avenue. This is the third of a series of public performances by CDNP – the first being last year’s “LRT Dance Express” at the LRT Line 2 and “Underground,” the performance at the Belmonte Underpass, Quezon City. It is CDNP’s way of bringing dance to a wider audience and in most unique ways and is open to the public.

The concept for “Hijack Dance” is to engage the idea of dance as spectacle but in an excessive, hilarious or extraordinary way in the hopes of challenging some stereotype ideas about dance.

Performed by Contemporary Dance Network Philippines with U.P. Percussionists and guest artists, in cooperation with the Quezon City Government and Araneta Center.

We invite everyone to cap IDD celebrations with the “Contemporary Dance Map Gala” on April 30, 8pm, Dance Forum Studio (36E West Avenue, QC). Tickets for this show are priced at P150.

For more info, contact: 09178514732

Every year has a message by an eminent dance personality. This year, the message is by Belgian choreographer, Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker, artistic director of Rosas, and founder of P.A.R.T.S. Dance School:

I think dance celebrates what makes us human.

When we dance we use, in a very natural way, the mechanics of our body and all our senses to express joy, sadness, the things we care about. People have always danced to celebrate the crucial moments of life and our bodies carry the memory of all the possible human experiences. We can dance alone and we can dance together. We can share what makes us the same, what makes us different from each other. For me dancing is a way of thinking. Through dance we can embody the most abstract ideas and thus reveal what we cannot see, what we cannot name.

Dance is a link between people, connecting heaven and earth. We carry the world in our bodies.

I think that ultimately each dance is part of a larger whole, a dance that has no beginning, and no end.

- Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (Artwork by Luca di Paolo)