SUMMER ACADEMY FOR PERFORMING ARTS – SOFIA ‘01
16 July– 7 August 2001

THE PROJECT
The Summer Academy for Performing Arts – Sofia project had four previous editions in 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000. They managed to create an European, flexible, interdisciplinary educational platform for professional communication between independently working artists in the field of performing arts and its broad contemporary definition from the Balkan region and the region of Central and Eastern Europe.

PARTICIPANTS’ PROFILE
This project is especially oriented to:
•	researchers, practitioners, theoreticians and managers in the field of contemporary theatre and dance; 
•	advanced students in acting, dance theatre, visual performance, stage design, art management and architecture; 
•	young emerging professionals in the field of movement and physical theatre, dance, visual performance, up-coming art managers, active in the cultural field of the region. 

The programme of the Summer Academy is specially designed for independent professionals from the Balkan region, Mediterranean, Eastern and Central Europe.
The project is organised by the Soros Centre for the Arts - Sofia and the New Bulgarian University in co-operation with Gulliver Clearing House Foundation and The Felix Meritis Foundation. The project collaborates with others in their professional capacity and competence in the field of training in the performing arts and art management in order to guarantee full support, shared responsibilities, expanded knowledge and adaptability of the project framework.

PROJECT GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT
The project is aimed:
•	To enlarge the professional culture and fill up the lack of information about techniques, methods and theories in the performing arts 
•	To develop a model programme for further professional training in the performing arts
•	To facilitate/strengthen contacts between training providers in the performing arts and educational generators-bearers in the region and to give assistance to the educational institutions in Bulgaria in defining their new programmes
•	To stimulate the idea of the necessity of further professional training after the high & university education
•	To distribute knowledge and build up professional skills
•	To create a platform for exchange of professional information and ideas
•	To establish and explore a performance vocabulary transforming it into personal style of movement
•	To create an opportunity for application of interdisciplinary approach to performing arts practice and education

PROJECT CURRICULUM FOR THE YEAR 2001
The Summer Academy in ‘01 will consist of two main modules - practical and theoretical one. 
In the frame of practical module there are two practical courses dealing with TECHNIQES and METHODS in Performing Arts. In the frame of theoretical module there is a workshop in psychodrama of fairy-tales, myths and dreams dealing with THEORIES in Performing Arts.

Techniques in Performing Arts - courses
The courses in this field explore the possibilities given by different techniques in the performing arts as a meaning of the creative expression. 
FELDENKRAIS FOR PERFORMERS course with Livia Calice, Austria
WHITE BUTOH  (The Intensity of Emptiness) with Masaki Iwana, Japan 
LABAN TECHNIQUE (the course is still to be confirmed) with Rosemary Brandt, UK

Theories in Performing Arts - courses
The course in this field explore the possibilities given by different instruments, communicative and artistic, in the field of social and artistic practices and how and whether they could be connected.
PSYCHODRAMA OF FAIRY-TALES, MYTHS AND DREAMS with David Ieroham, Bulgaria

Methods in Performing Arts - courses
The course in this field makes entire integrity to the topics of the other part of the curriculum of the Summer Academy.
BODIES & TIME (STICK MAN) with Vazkressia Vicharova  and Zarko Ouzounov, Bulgaria
The programme of the courses is organised in two main parts: 
•	Course process
In the course process the participants work within group and in smaller groups; there are lots of practical tasks, case studies, games. The course work relies very much on the activity of each participant.  
•	Public presentations
There will be one public day for presentation of each of the three practical courses. Each presentation follows the 6-day workshop. The presentation targets general and interested audience. It includes presentation of the workshop methods, working demonstrations, video screenings and discussions. Practical tasks involve audience in active participation. 

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS, TEAMS OF TRAINERS / LECTURERS, SELECTING PROCEDURE
The working groups and teams of trainers are international ones. All courses are held in English. The applicants should have a common knowledge in spoken English in order to participate actively in the course process.
The participants are selected by the group leader/s and the organisers on the base of their motivation and professional interest. Due to the limited number of places, late and incomplete applications will not be taken into consideration. 
Each group consists of minimum 12 and maximum 18 participants.

SELECTING CRITERIA
•	professional experience and its related links to the topics of the course
•	motivation and reason for doing the course at the current stage of professional career of the candidate

LEVEL, DEGREE AND DIPLOMA
Courses will be given according general academic standards at Postgraduate Faculty of the New Bulgarian University. 
Every participant receives certificate confirming his/her participation which will correspond to the number of scores and credit points according to the customary academic standards. 

APPLICATION AND REGISTRATION
The information for the project can be copied and distributed among other interested in participation. The applicants should return their application forms, recommendation letters and passport photos by Monday, June 18, 2001 to: 

SAPA–SOFIA ‘01 (c/o SCA - Sofia)
19, Angel Kanchev st.
Sofia 1000 – Bulgaria 
Tel. / Fax (+ 359 2) 980 02 44 / 980 49 24 
E-mail: sapa_sofia@sca.osf.bg
www.sapa-sofia.org
The successfully selected participants will be notified with the results by Monday, June 25, 2001.

SCHOLARSHIPS
Each participant gets a scholarship.
The scholarship covers the accommodation, meals and round trip ticket for participants from Central and Eastern Europe, former Soviet Union countries and Central Asia countries. 
The scholarship for the participants from Western Europe and outside Europe countries covers the accommodation, meals and part of the round trip ticket.

PARTICIPATION FEE
The participation fee is not included in the scholarship. The selected participants should transfer the participation fee of $25 US (twenty five American dollars) to the SCA bank account not later than by 2nd of July. 

SHORT DESCRIPTIONS OF THE COURSES

16-22 July 2001
course: FELDENKRAIS FOR PERFORMERS
course leader: Livia Calice, Austria 

This course suggests body training based on the principles of Moshe Feldenkrais especially oriented to live arts performers. It happens for the fourth time and is a continuation of the three courses in Feldenkrais that have been done before within the Summer Academy. This year the course incorporates the development of the initial idea with the changing dimensions coming from the practice. 
It will postpone real time, meaningful thought and action in order to go beyond mechanical and stereotyped ways of moving. The course will take you through carefully structured explorations of small and large movements. Although the scope of your movements will be drastically cut down, you will find the situation very rich in body experiences. These are the keys for changes in body-image and self-perception. The movements themselves do not have to be done in a correct or a proper way. You look for well-being. 
You move, as you understand at moment. The explorations will be led by barely perceptible intuitions of how to use your skeleton in the field of gravity. Besides the actual experience of easily, clarity and joy while moving you will gain criterion for quality and a way to work from inner feeling.

24-30 July 2001
course: PSYCHODRAMA OF FAIRY-TALES, MYTHS AND DREAMS
course leader: David Ieroham, Bulgaria

This course is in the curriculum of the Summer Academy for the first time. 
The course explores the way we communicate and relate to the others. The course suggests to experience together the way of knowing the unconscious and imagination inside ourselves. The unconscious constructed as a scene and explored through staging the experienced “here and now”, using different psychological and psychotherapeutic approaches. Fairy-tales, myths and dreams as narratives created by our imagination that explores our fears transforming them into symbols. That’s how we could overcome fears and understand own unconscious mechanisms better.  
The course creates an opportunity for exploration of fairy-tales, myths and dreams through active psychological methods easing the group to ask its own unconscious, searching for answers concerning the actual being. This self-knowledge contributes the development of the artistic activities in the work with children and adults. 
The exploration in this direction widens the opportunities for the artists to understand and know the man better rather as feelings and fantasies reflecting the essence of artists’ own human experience than as its rationality. In this sense the exploration is constructed as an environment of the imagination and at the same time in the imagination of each individual. 
A human being can express its own unconscious self only through sharing experience with another human being.

Psychodrama is an active psychotherapeutically tasted method by means of which the participants are able to live through their unconscious fears, motives and experiences in consequence of dramatization of text which they will stage. Thus these experiences would be turned into positive practice. Practically this contributes in the rising of their creativity and spontaneity that will lead itself to the making out of decision about their own artistic lives and. 
The workshop targets performers, researchers, visual artists and practitioners working on small artistic projects in social context. They will get acquainted with the psychodramatic method that are required for the work with fairy-tales, myths and dreams, as well as to apply the learnt knowledge and skills in their artistic work with children and adults. 

24-30 July 2001
course: WHITE BUTOH  (The Intensity of Emptiness)
course leader: Masaki Iwana, Japan 

The course is offered for the second time this year. It is open for performers, researchers, dancers, visual artists, architects, and all other professional artists who might be interested in participation. The course provides body training in contemporary Japanese dance Butoh and the ways they can be individually interpreted as a body language. The course allows the participants to:
1)	Study of the basic principles of movement analysing the composition and function of body.
2)	Discover “body” itself not simply as “forms and movements”, but using general possible status of “inner landscape” as model and sources.
3)	Use poems and words as source to transform “imagination (Ideal product)” into “image (visible product)” not depending on standards (signs, symbols).
4)	Train through free dance how to select instantly the most exact elements to be danced among several (or more) possibilities which are present right before action and behaviour. That means generally to train “improvisation”.
The course suggests a system of training exercises in four directions:
•	Body training 
•	Defined dance
•	Inspiration dance
•	Free dance

Butoh is a form of contemporary dance which is said to have been initiated in the late 50s by Tatsumi Haijikata. It is contemporary dance in very precise sense of the term. Butoh has been adapted and charged the Japan’s avant-garde scene. Masaki Iwana has been fuelled by the tremendous power of several dancers, but first and foremost was Tatsumi Haijikata with his “Ankoku Butoh”. The 1980s saw Butoh dancers (Masaki Iwana as well) developing and expending their activities, not only in Japan, but also in Europe, the United States and all over the world.

Tatsum Hijkata needed a word to express his attitude towards dance “Han-Gi-Ta-to-Kan”. That means we should first dance by making our body and soul grill and sacrifice, and then we would dance by making the huge nature a mirror (or a role model) being self-critical and honest. Maski Iwana defines it that it must be a sort of suggestion to ask ourselves to dance “things” which exist in our body beyond society, system and standard. And when we once catch our body as “things”, then morals, intentions, desires, life and death, violence, errors, etc. start to move forming a spin like lianas of threes which are flown in the rapids towards “emptiness” (the beginning of entirety which have been allowed in the universe). Moreover for the person who want to dance, the emptiness would be “intense”.

1-7 August 2001
course: BODIES & TIME (STICK MAN) 
course leaders: Vazkressia Vicharova  - theatre director, Zarko Ouzounov - architect, Bulgaria

This course happens within the Summer Academy for the fifth time. It suggests a system of training exercises that develop abilities for creating theatre forms based on the notion of the actor’s body as a basic bearer of the energy, in two directions:
•	Formation
During the process of training you will be provoked to build up a new own body with the help of external, mechanical conditions (sticks). Thus you will be embarrassed doing any, even the most trivial psycho-physical action. The energy necessary to adapt the body towards these embarrassing circumstances, called the energy of resistance, is the proposed mechanism of concentration. Whether this is another possibility to remind you once again the idea of super-super marionette?
•	Transformation
Through the exercises in this direction you will gain experience in the establishing, developing and transforming of a form. The concrete practical developments, under historically established morphological structure of Bulgarian folk dance, will be suggested. Tagging a dance will allow you to acquire some more abilities for managing of energy of your own body.
The course consists of three parts:
1.	general warming-up exercises
2.	general training exercises
3.	individual demonstrations

1-7 August 2001(The dates and the course are still to be confirmed. Please contact us for more details or visit the www.sapa-sofia.org )
course: LABAN TECHNIQUE 
course leaders: Rosemary Brandt, UK

The course provides an introduction into the system of Rudolf Laban for professional performers in the field of contemporary dance, theatre and visual arts. The course aims at the practical skill development of the performer’s body orientation in the space and its turning into a personal style of expression.

The course is to be included in the SAPA – Sofia ‘01 curriculum for the first time. The course targets professional dancers and movement theatre performers.

Please note that more detailed description will be provided after the official confirmation of the course.

this project is supported by