Funding System Failing the Dance Community

This text is an excerpt from a speech by choreographer Jasna Layes Vinovrški on June 4, 2024 as part of the opening of the Watch Me Dance campaign initiated by Tanzbüro Berlin and the presentation of the TanzAgenda2024. In her speech, Vinovrški referred to the precarious working reality of dance professionals in Berlin, clearly criticized the inadequate funding and called for broad alliances of dance professionals and a change in the funding system to sustainably secure the future of dance in Berlin. What we all failed to anticipate at the time of her speech was the extent to which the austerity measures would further negatively impact the dance scene in 2025. This makes her speech all the more poignant today.

Jasna Layes Vinovrški
Choreographer and Teacher

This year started out for me, as it did for most Berlin artists, with writing tons of applications. This is part of myjob; however, the current situation with funding for dance in Berlin is extremely difficult, and it is hitting Berlin dance workers really hard. With this statement, I would like to acknowledge this situation, which is seen in politics as a natural return to the times before the COVID-19 pandemic. But we all know that nothing is the same as it was in 2019: inflation and increasing living costs are part of our reality today. Plus, the rise of the minimum wage that we all bravely accepted has not been accompanied with the inflow of more money into the funding pots. This entire situation forces dance artists back into survival mode, a situation that is even worse than it’s ever been.

I’ve come to understand that the funding system in Berlin is structured as if it supports hobby dance artists, despite the fact that a huge number of applications is coming from professionally educated dancers and choreographers. In every one of these applications, dance workers need to repeatedly prove their professionalism by submitting their CVs and portfolios. They constantly have to prove that they are continually working to a system that doesn’t allow them to work continually. This system doesn’t acknowledge that, as professional dance workers, we need sustainability and continuity so we can develop our artistic work and our structures. It doesn’t acknowledge that we might also need to care for another human being, for our children, for our parents, or perhaps our partners. It doesn’t acknowledge that our pension will bring us into poverty in old age. It doesn’t acknowledge that many of us can’t just go back to where we came from, as we might not be able to live in our countries of origin due to our nationality, sexual identity or disability.

Berlin has the largest freelance dance scene in Germany, and in the past decades, internationally recognized artists have lived and worked here. Their contribution to the development of contemporary dance, both locally and internationally, is and has been immense. Yet silently, without much fuss, many of these artists simply disappeared from the Berlin dance scene. Nobody knows why or how; we just hear about them suddenly changing their professions, living in other cities or countries, or we don’t hear anything about them anymore. I believe that this funding system is responsible for that, as well for the invisibility of many applying artists. The funding pots are so poorly filled that they are very far from meeting realistic demands. Every dance jury has been writing about this alarming situation and repeating it, almost as a mantra, year after year.

My wish is that all dance workers in Berlin unite and claim our worker rights. No more hiding hundreds of applicants who don’t get funding. What we see on stage today is a tiny minority of artists who work very hard, knowing how lucky they are to have funding, but maybe not knowing that the system won’t allow them to survive for long. It is a system that focuses on upcoming, new, and above all temporary art. A system that only offers a temporary perspective, which then shapes Berlin’s flair as a hype cultural city, initiates gentrification processes, attracts investors, and then says: Goodbye forever.

It pushes artists to become lonely individuals, who are chasing their careers, being rooted nowhere, and without any guarantee of sustainability or continuity, no matter how successful they are.

I’d like to acknowledge all the hundreds of applications that have been rejected, as each rejection doesn’t only mean an existential threat for us but also calls into question our self-worth. This funding system perpetually rejects 85 % of our dance community and forces the ones who receive the funding to produce like maniacs. This dynamic has, over the years, affected mental and physical health of our entire community, and we have witnessed serious cases of depression, illness, and even suicides of our colleagues. This funding system destroys our past, while not even securing decent funding for documentation and archives, so we can at least remember all the amazing artists who have lived and worked in Berlin. It also destroysour future, as it keeps artists in the emerging field forever. It contains a funding pot called “basic funding” (“Basisförderung”), that is, in reality, a two-year project funding, and it doesn’t offer a base whatsoever. Moreover, it operates upon outdated bus metaphors (artists should hop on and hop off the bus), which makes it really hard for artists to build their structures, their companies. Such a system limits the natural growth of the dance scene in Berlin and does not allow multi-generational coexistence within the scene.

It is time for a better funding system that enables continuous, sustainable work and that allows us to build our structures through which we can pay for our working and storage spaces, our administration and production, and our long-term collaborators (dancers, dramaturges, light designers, costume designers) with whom we can develop long-term work partnerships. Around each such structure, a community of dance audiences is built. With the silent disappearance of an artist from the funding system, it’s also those micro communities that dissolve, and we lose precious audiences that we have developed and fostered carefully over the years, opening up their interest and passion for contemporary dance. Some of the most recognized choreographers and dancers internationally come from Berlin and have been known as pioneers in the development of dance worldwide. Today, more and more of these artists, as well as many emerging and mid-career artists, are considering leaving Berlin, perhaps for good. This system is not the responsibility of no one; it is the responsibility of the government. Therefore my urgent appeal to the government of Berlin is to take action to stop the destruction of the freelance dance scene in Berlin, and to my colleagues to unite in the fight for our working rights.