Life Long Burning (LLB)
Futures Lost and Found
Life Long Burning (LLB) is a European network project of twelve different dance organizations that aims to promote change in contemporary dance practice, foster new sustainable models of artistic work and exchange, and sustainably develop the structures of the dance and performance scene. The identity and dynamics of the project are based on the diversity of the participating partner organizations - dance houses, choreography centers, festivals, support organizations, trans-national networks for contemporary dance in the Balkans - the network partners are spread all over Europe and are representative of an extended cross-section of dance organizations in the contemporary context.
With the project, the participating organizations strive for a new model of cooperation based on the long-term developed partnership between the project partners and their regional allies. The network of partner institutions brings together diverse resources with which to engage in ongoing conversations about contemporary dance culture, practice, and ways of working. Shared knowledge, collective intelligence, the will to overcome nationalist setbacks and economic insecurity unfold and reinforce exchanges and collaborations among themselves, positively influencing network activities as well as the artists involved in the project and their trajectories.
With different modules, the project offers sustainable support for contemporary dance artists by stimulating exchange with other disciplines, expanding the scope and audience, and offering various feedback formats and audience-oriented reflection. Thus, in tune with the evolution of contemporary dance towards hybridity and expanded choreography, with a focus on process-oriented experiences, as well as research, experimentation, and audience activation, dance practice is anchored in a more complex social and discursive context to increasingly accompany the art form in its development.
For more info visit https://www.lifelongburning.eu/.
News
May 6th, 2025
Call for June residencies for North Macedonian artists
by Lokomotiva and Uferstudios as part of Life Long Burning
Lokomotiva (Skopje) and Uferstudios (Berlin) invite applications for a 10–14-day artistic residency in Berlin in 2025 (ideally 16.06. – 27.06.2025), offered within the framework of the Life Long Burning (LLB) project, co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.
This residency is designed to support choreographers, dancers and dance makers in the field of contemporary dance and performance based in North Macedonia who need support in their creation process.
WHAT THE PROGRAM OFFERS
- Overall budget of €4,800 for 2 people (covering travel, accommodation, per diem, artist fees, studio time with technical support)
- Access to studios at Uferstudios equipped with technical capacity
- Optional informal showing of work in progress
- Tailored dramaturgical or technical input and peer expertise from Berlin-based artists or professionals, based on the specific needs of the selected artists
- Additional €500 available for local collaborator, research partner, or dramaturg-collaborator
REQUIREMENTS:
Artists must live and work in North Macedonia
Application deadline is May 23, 2025!
More information about the application process here (in English and Macedonian).
January 15th, 2025
Tour through Tanztage 2025
As part of the LLB program Capacity Grid, Jelena Alempijević (Nomad Dance Academy) and Hamed Rad (ICI-CNN) are taking part in this year's Tour Through Tanztage together with three Berlin-based artists - Pamela Moraga, Susanna Ylikoski and Sointu Pere. The peer-to-peer workshop, moderated by Inge Koks, will take place as part of the Tanztage festival and will accompany the program over the course of 1.5 weeks.
January 2nd, 2025
On The Outset 2024
Elvan Tekin completed an internship as part of On The Outset at Uferstudios
Elvan Tekin (Izmir, 1994) is a dancer, performer, choreographer and community organizer based in Berlin. Driven from her upbringing in the geo-politics of west Asia, her artistic interests deal with the entanglement and fluidity of one’s body, language, identity, and their (trans)formations and how these interact and shape the understanding of self and other. In 2022, Elvan’s research project poetics of political resistance was funded in the frame of #TakeHeart residencies in Kampnagel, Hamburg. In 2023, her solo performance to be a fish in a raki bottle was presented at Tanztage Festival in Sophiensaele, Berlin. Recently, she has completed her master’s degree in Choreography at HZT, Berlin. Moreover, Elvan is the co-curator and organizer of the curatorial project emergent spaces that is centralizing queer and trans* feminist perspectives in the diaspora.
Elvan Tekin worked at Uferstudios from October 2024 to January 2025 as part of the Life Long Burning program On The Outset.
In December, Elvan Tekin visited our Swedish network partner MDT in Stockholm as part of Outsetters Abroad.
Artistic Exchange Residency 2024
James Batchelor with Bek Berger at the Workshop Foundation Budapest
James Batchelor was invited by the Workshop Foundation Budapest with Bek Berger to spend a two-week Artistic Exchange Residency in Budapest in October 2024.
Modules 2023-2026
Capacity Grid & On The Outset
Innovative training models for sustainable work for emerging artists in all areas of contemporary dance
Performance Situation Room
Open-format laboratories & artistic assemblies on aesthetic and (cultural) political topics
Artistic Exchange Residencies
Residency programm that promote European and international exchange, networking and capacity building
Creative Crossroads
2-year program to support and develop emerging and established artists
Choreographic Convention
Annual exchange platform with a focus on current topics in contemporary dance
Modules 2018-2022
Creative Crossroads
AN ORGANIC WAY TO CREATE NEW WORK
From previous experiences with European dance production, LLB knew that current models of co-production do not always meet the requirements of artists working in the 21st century. Therefore, with the activity Creative Crossroads, LLB developed a twofold strategy to meet those needs and requirements both from the perspective of intense mutual exchange of services and mobility, as well as from the perspective of enhancing and strengthening the respective local scenes, while at the same time promoting co-productions, which are designed to answer to and encourage a local scene beyond the own region.
Over the 4 years, 21 artistic projects received enhanced structural accompaniment for 2 years each: LLB set out to invite artists/artistic collectives of diverse ages and backgrounds to travel the network and benefit from all its diversity.
Creative Crossroads aims at the sustainability of contemporary dance creations. Therefore it supports as well the re-staging of existing work, longer runs of new creations and adaptations of works for different contexts and audiences (outdoor, museum, for younger audience etc.).
Dance Hub
FOR A DIVERSE DANCE LANDSCAPE
Via open call, the LLB family offered a multitude of opportunities for emerging dance artists, dance administrators and dance writers to deepen and exchange their knowledge. For Dance Hub, the project partners developed a system allowing for these benefits to reach beyond the local scene and bring international artists from one into another local scene in order to introduce previously unknown players with each other. All Dance Hub residencies included travel, housing, per diem and studio.
Some Dance Hub residencies focused on the development of work (including coaching), some on completion of work (including technical assistance and precious theatre time), others on the implementation of an international festival, the deepening of technique or the practice of writing. Every open call was stating in detail what had been on offer for the artist and following this call through when selecting the artists for the relevant Dance Hub residency.
Performance Situation Room
RESEARCH INTO THE UNDISCOVERED
Performance Situation Room is a European thought space, an innovation hub, an international incubator. It allows LLB, its players and most of all the benefiting artists, writers, theoreticians, multipliers and audiences to apply their skills spontaneously on emerging situations, locally and internationally, by devising formats entirely depending on the relevant scenario.
SuSy Support System
With SuSy (Support System), LLB ensured to pass on its vast knowledge composed by all the project partners to people interested in joining the cultural field on an administrative level. The arts are infamous for its abundance of work to be done equalled by hardly any pay. SuSy was trying to tackle this issue by professionalizing the scene and thus reducing the work load through efficiency as well as by making the process of getting there a paid one, not an exploited one.
Choreographic Convention
LLB was hosting a total of 8 professional platforms addressing current issues of contemporary dance as well as the field’s place in society. These were numbered from I-VIII with the aim to create a continuity, which allows for following and establishing the notion of contemporary dance as European cultural heritage through its duration. Choreographic Convention will include lectures and panels as well as workshops, showings, advocacy activities and actions relating to the relevant local reality of the Choreographic Convention host, supported and attended by all network players and/or associates.
The Choreographic Convention Berlin is part of the European network project Life Long Burning and had been funded with funds from the Creative Europe Program and the co-financing fund of the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe.
Veranstaltungen
danceWEB Stipendien
The danceWEB scholarship program was a 5-week training program that took place every year from July to August in Vienna as part of ImPulsTanz - Vienna International Dance Festival.
The program offered young professional dancers and choreographers from predominantly European, but also non-European countries, the opportunity to participate in an intensive multinational training program.
The focus of the program was on the cross-border exchange of ideas and knowledge, concentrated further training, encountered with internationally renowned artists who met at ImPulsTanz, with the aim of offering participants orientation for their careers.
In order to achieve both the educational and artistic goals, the scholarship holders were accompanied each year by artistic mentors selected from the circle of dance personalities who have played a decisive role in shaping the development of contemporary dance on an international level in recent years.
danceWEB Scholarships also supported the training program for young choreographers ATLAS - create your dance trails.
Funding
From the past
Publications
"DANCEOLITICS" - a reading book by Kasia Wollinska in cooperation with Simone Willeit /Uferstudios GmbH
Feb 2021 - Dec 2021, published (c) 2021 in the context of the Life Long Burning module Performance Situation Room
With contributions by Olympia Bukkakis, Sabine Cmelniski, Claire Cunningham, Luca De Vitis, Bouchra Lamsyeh, Anka Herbut, Christelle Ahia Marie-Laure Kamanan, Wanda Gaimes & Pedro Marum, Ysaline Rochat, Olia Sosnovskaya, Mateusz Szymanówka, Nir Vidan
Proofreading: Chloe Chignell, Design: Maximilian Mauracher and David Rindlisbacher, 3D Herwig Scherabon
Order via mail@uferstudios.com.
"Dance by Other means" - a reader on dramaturgy by Mila Pavićević
Jun 2020 - Jul 2020
This publication, based on the Lab, was created in collaboration with Uferstudios GmbH as part of the Performance Situation Room module of the European network project Life Long Burning, co-funded by the Creative Europe Program of the European Union.
You can order a copy of the publication via mail@uferstudios.com or mila.pavicevic@gmail.com.
Videos
will follow soon.
Dialogues
“Voneinander Lernen / Common Learning - Bodily Knowledge in the Social Sphere” laboratory
12.11.18-26.02.19
A group of artists, guided by Constanze Schellow and Simone Willeit, addressed the issue of mutual learning on local level in the format of Performance Situation Room, by creating for the period of over 2 months, a research laboratory of Berlin artists and visitors from the Neighborhood, framed around issues of teaching physical knowledge to non-dancers and the sensitization of kinesthetic cognition in a participatory setting.
This went hand in hand with a deeper analysis and question: How can an art scene, that tends to close itself up, be expanded within its context? And to what extent are our working constellations in the art field enriched by the involvement of experts or non-experts, from other fields and professional practices?
A final development of the PSR#1 Group for the 2018/2019 module took place in the form of a durational community event in the Heizhaus space of Uferstudios, in which various initiatives and connections made during the laboratory project, came together for a performative celebration: HouseHeating at AUSUFERN.
PSR#1 Group:
Mila Pavicevic, Juli Reinartz, Sheena McGrandles, Modjgan Hashemian, Stefan Hölscher, Lea Martini, Simone Willeit, Constanze Shellow