Within Practice is a seven-day meeting between professional dancers and students from DOCH and interested members of the public. The symposium focuses on practice and practices from the practitioner’s perspective, and includes workshops and public presentations.

The concept of practice(s) is widely-used within dance and choreography today, some would say overused. The concept of practice can provide an opportunity to move beyond the projectification of the art, and instead insist on other long-term approaches. Practice can offer a way of generating choreography and movement, to train/repeat (to practice). In Within practice, we aim to emphasise the inherently experimental and insistent qualities of practices, and offer a space for practising, discussions and artists’ presentations, and continue to build community among practitioners.

“As dance artists, we often talk about practice(s) as a concept, but in public contexts we seldom go into detail in discussing how and why a certain practice is constructed as it is. To understand and experience a practice, I believe that we need to practice it, see it from the outside and set it against our own. The format of the symposium attempts to give space for these perspectives and to create a meeting ground for sharing.”—Björn Säfsten, initiator