On December 12, 2019, the House of Representatives agreed the double budget for the State of Berlin for 2020 and 2021, marking the end of an exhausting but successful year for Berlin dance after the Round Table for Dance in 2018.
For the first stage of the Dance Development Programme 2019-2025, the State of Berlin is making a total of €1,100,000 (2020) and €1,295,000 (2021) available to implement the results of the recommendations of the Round Table for Dance. We’d like to thank Berlin’s cultural policymakers and particularly the governing ‘red-red-green’ coalition for initiating, supporting and accelerating the Round Table for Dance format in which talks between administration, politics and the Berlin dance scene were conducted on a uniquely equal footing. In the intensive discussions, pioneering instruments that mark a break with the customary thought processes behind the funding system, but which at the same time correspond very closely with artistic practice, were developed. Thanks to bold decisions and the support of politics and administration, pilot projects such as ‘Dance Practice’ or a residency programme for Berlin dance will now be implemented for the first time. We’d like to thank Berlin’s creative dance artists for their participation in the Round Table for Dance working groups and for supporting and helping to shape the Contemporary Dance Berlin (ZTB) association’s #Dance4Millions campaign.
Based on the three pillars of ‘Continuity of Artistic Working’, ‘Strengthening Decentralised Infrastructure’ and ‘New Central Institutions for Dance’, the latest political decisions mean that all the measures arising from the Round Table for Dance – and which are intended to have a direct impact on dance – can now be addressed. Firstly, the lack of co-ordination of instruments in the existing funding system will be specifically addressed and transformed using innovative pilot programmes for dance. All aspects of creative artistic work – research, projects, presentation, distribution, visibility, transfer and archiving – will be taken into account in the overall spectrum and interwoven with each other. This is the only way that reliable structures can be developed for dance over time. However, despite our delight with the new funding, which will flow into the ‘structural funding for dance’ pot, we should not forget that there is still a major shortage of well over two million euros (!) for dance in the existing funding instruments, particularly in the Basic Funding and Concept Funding programmes.
The new measures in detail:
Pilot project: ‘Dance Practice’
More than 30 creative dancers in Berlin will receive long-term stipends in the next two years to finance their artistic practices and develop them further. This is the test project for an instrument that is unique in Germany and was developed in the Round Table for Dance, which used as its example a model that has long been practiced successfully in Norway. As a complementary model to the existing funding system, it will provide artists in the three career levels of ‘emerging artist’, ‘mid-career artist’ und ‘senior artist’ with the continuity they urgently need for their work and which is needed if art is to be able to unfold on a sustainable basis. The total volume of the pilot project in 2020 and 2021 amounts to €680,000. The long-term target for ‘Dance Practice’ is annual funding for 10% of Berlin’s professional dance artists.
Pilot project: ‘Residency Funding’
The pilot project ‘Residency Funding’ aims to initiate long-term co-operation between Berlin-based dance artists and dance-production venues. Different models will provide creative dance artists with spatial, financial, technical, content-related or administrative support and thus receive professional support from a venue as well as its infrastructure and network for work phases conducted independently of any specific project. It is envisaged that dance locations in Berlin will be able to submit applications for residency programmes in the spring of 2020 and that the selected venues – intended to cover the high level of diversity in a decentralised dance landscape – will offer their co-operations with dance artists from the middle of 2020 to the end of 2021. The total volume of the pilot project amounts to €603,000.
Pilot project: ‘Dance Distribution’
In order for the State of Berlin to be able to represent its funded artists sufficiently outside of the capital city, people are needed who can distribute the works to national and international organisers. And in order to develop this practically non-existent profession in the dance world, solid structural funding is needed in the medium term for production managers. In an initial small step, around €40,000 will be made available in each of the next two years to enable either a production manager or production managers to organise guest performances for approx. 6-8 artists.
Strengthening decentralised locations for dance
Even if important financial resources are being provided for this funding pillar – €400,000 in 2020 and 2021 – the heaviest deficit is also recorded here, as there is still an annual shortage of the around €850,000 that is needed to put the many venues that produce and present dance in Berlin on a sound financial footing. Nevertheless, the funding that has been allocated can be used to cover the shortfalls experienced by several venues funded on a project basis, and for the first time to provide financial support for the Uferstudios as an key venue in Berlin’s dance scene.
Conception phases: ‘House of Dance and Choreography’, ‘Communicating Dance Centre’ (Tanzvermittlungszentrum) and ‘Dance Archive’
In order to support its uniquely diverse and decentralised landscape, Berlin dance needs three central institutions that bundle its enormous productivity, past and present, and enable a wide public to experience its output. Presentation, transfer, research and archiving must also be used to make Berlin dance’s broad spectrum visible at central, high-profile locations. Over the next two years, the ‘House of Dance and Choreography’, which has been on the wish list for many years now, as well as a ‘Communicating Dance Centre’ (Tanzvermittlungszentrum) and a ‘Dance Archive’ will be developed gradually, in conception phases, as long-term goals.
Partners in the TanzRaumBerlin network
Contemporary Dance Berlin (ZTB) association
Tanzbüro Berlin