IMPACT is a transnational Masters degree in performance and creative technologies in dance. It is a traveling programme in which students are immersed and educated in different contexts and cultures creating spaces for artistic dialogues, across cultures and disciplines. It offers the possibility for participants to collaborate, expand their network and get to know people, practitioners, and artists working in several contexts and who view the arts from multiple angles. IMPACT engages students in being responsible and accountable in their artistic practices as well as in relation to existing surrounding ecologies.

The study course is designed to immerse the students in the cultural particularities of place in relation to body-based performance forms. The IMPACT consortium designed a programme based on shared pillars resulting in a multi-layered curriculum. The courses are shaped by the unique attributes and cultural contexts of each institution. This shared focus acts as a compass for students’ creative journey as they navigate changing environments.

IMPACT is a transnational Masters degree programme in performance and creation processes related to dance.  This programme is organised by higher education and art institutions that form epicenters of dance in Europe and West Africa. 
As a traveling Masters programme, students engage in situated critical perspective in multiple countries across four semesters. The curriculum is designed to immerse the students in the cultural particularities of place in relation to body-based performance forms. The IMPACT consortium designed a programme based on shared pillars resulting in a multi-layered curriculum. The courses are shaped by the unique attributes and cultural contexts of each institution. This shared focus acts as a compass for students’ creative journey as they navigate changing environments.
The programme offers the possibility for students to collaborate, expand their network and get to know artists and other professionals working in varied contexts and who view the arts from multiple angles. It engages students to be responsible and accountable in their artistic practices as well as in relation to existing surrounding ecologies.
It also values plurality and equality in dance / embodied expression from across varied cultural and geopolitical contexts.  

“Creative technologies in dance” refers both to the tools, strategies and ways of knowing used to make and support dance-based performance as well as the knowledges that emerge from the processes and practices of dance–anchored work. It includes different tools and various techniques such as artistic, material, digital, physical, methodological, intellectual, organisational, etc., that can help enrich, define, expand, or transform dance practices.
In this Masters programme, students will be presented with different creative approaches to dance, as well as guided in developing their own forms of embodied expression. 

They will: 

• investigate a wide variety of dance structures, systems and styles; 
• practice with professionals and artists from different political, ideological and physical contexts currently shaping/questioning the fields of dance through their work and research; 
• explore both embodied and non-embodied (virtual, digital, etc.) methodologies; 
• be offered different (theoretical) frameworks with which to contemplate and practice dance.  

Dance and performance have the potential to transcend barriers, connecting individuals and communities in profound ways.
IMPACT proposes an educational experience that acts on both students and institutions involved, favoring a proliferation of differences rather than consensus. Students will engage in collaborative knowledge production and sharing, building and nourishing sustainable relationships with respect to place and space.
The academic, professional, artistic and social dimensions are equally valued in the offered programme. 

IMPACT expands the possibilities of perceiving, doing and experimenting with artistic research. The Master supports dance practice as knowledge production and provides tools to expand skills in teaching, researching, choreographing, performing, creation and production processes, policy making, curating, etc.
This Masters programme connects embodied practice, critical reflection and artistic research through the following: 

• students interrogate their practices with a critical perspective, positioning their work into wider artistic, cultural and social contexts; 
• students are offered a wide variety of theoretical and artistic frameworks to critically reflect on their work, and will learn how to perform theoretical research; 
• they are trained in different methods to express and develop this critical reflection, including experimental writing forms, academic writing, visual documentation forms (video, photography, etc.). 

Teachers, artists and other professionals support IMPACT students to develop their final project in the form of a performative event and documented critical reflection over the course of two years. 

Dance shapes and is also shaped by politics, social structures and hierarchies, cultural practices and traditions, natural and urban environments. This Masters programme will engage students to be responsible and accountable in their artistic practices as well as in relation to existing surrounding ecologies. 
IMPACT requires participants to critically reflect individually and collectively on their roles in society. It encourages artists to take up roles in key positions in society creating an impact on policy-making through their arts. IMPACT is aware of the existence of structural discrimination and inequity in art practices, institutions and education. In response, it creates a responsive and flexible programme that respects diversity. 

IMPACT develops and nurtures relationships between institutions, artists and educational systems that go beyond conventional dance training; rather, the programme advances the field through unexpected encounters, collaborations and methods in dance-based art creation.
IMPACT actively invites students, professionals and academic staff to critically reflect on the programme, thus ensuring actual relevance. 
IMPACT will offer new (digital, material, methodological, embodied and non-embodied) tools to students to (re)position themselves in current and future (societal, natural, virtual, augmented and digital) realities. Our program aims to inspire recent graduates to make significant contributions to artistic fields and to redefine and question the fields of performance, dance and education.  

 

Shared context: Body, Theory, Place and Event:

This course will address assumptions and practices of embodiment particular to the place of study as well as the role of theory in creating , sustaining and challenging these assumptions and practices. The lessons will happen both explicitly and implicitly, through immersion and engagement with place, institution and cultural events.

 

Materialities of Performance:

This course addresses the materials that accompany bodies in performed work: stage craft, sound design, music, costume, visual design etc.

 

Praxis:

Addresses studio practice, body-based creation methods and exposes the student to varied ways of crafting performative works as well as supporting them in their own process.

 

Research Methodologies:

This course will introduce and support the student in naming and developing their own studio and research practices as well as introducing them into to practices of the emerging field of artistic research.