Festival Deltebre Dansa

Festival Deltebre Dansa

Tell us a story: Festival Deltebre Dansa

February 12, 2016, 3:45 pm
2013 I 2016

 

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Title of the project: Festival Deltebre Dansa

Please describe your action/project

The Festival Deltebre Dansa is a unique event in an exceptional place as Deltebre, in the Ebro Delta (Catalonia, Spain), which attracts 150 contemporary dancers and circus artists from around the world to live a unique experience immersed in an intense artistic activity. For 15 days, outstanding teachers of international fame, propose workshops of various artistic disciplines such as dance and circus, which gives participants an advanced technique in contemporary art. The Festival also offers an extensive program of activities and entertainment for both participants and the local people of Deltebre to enjoy together in this unique space. And in addition, during these 15 days the Festival also offers a wide programme of more than 40 varied avant-garde with free entrance and for all audiences.

Tell us something more about your project/activity:

• Content:

Deltebre Dansa is focused on three facets which are the professional workshops for professional contemporary dancers and circus artists, the workshops for beginners and the wide programme of avant-garde performances (which is the most ludic side of the Festival).

• Duration:

The Festival is annual and it always takes place at summer, during two weeks. In the last edition it was carried out from 6th to 19th July 2015; 15 days of pure intensity.

• Location:

Deltebre is the chosen spot to take in the Festival. Deltebre is an idyllic setting at the heart of the Ebro Delta (Catalonia, Spain). For 15 days this beautiful location becomes a capital of culture, epicentre of the performing arts.

• Field/discipline:

The Festival wants to create a multidisciplinary artistic atmosphere. This is why it makes a mixture of the performing arts, specifically contemporary dance and circus.

Tell us something about who did it

The project was born thanks to Roberto Olivan Performing Arts (it is the new brand for Enclave Arts del Moviment) the dance company of the dancer and choreographer Roberto Olivan. Though it does not seem like it, the production of a Festival of this importance is possible thanks to our small but great team composed of ten members. Roberto Olivan is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Festival. Mar Moreno is the Production Manager. Carles de la Iglesia and Laura Curto are the Production Assistants. Oriol Ibañez and Ignasi Solé are the Technical Team. Albert Vidal is in charge of the design and the media strategy. Josep Ramon Guallar is in charge of the mass media, sponsorship and design of the online strategy. Verónica Guirguis is in charge of both the content strategy design and sponsorship. And Alfred Picó is in charge of the mass media in another area.

Tell us something about the people who in your view received the most significant impact

The Festival has a significant impact in all its targets thanks to the mixture and open space that it creates with them. There are three different groups that receive this impact. On one hand, we have got the professional dancers and circus participants that come to receive a high-level vocational training in performing arts. We can clearly see the growth of this impact on the figures recorded. To ensure the highest quality of these workshops, the Festival can only hold 150 participants, but we can see the great impact in the figures of the pre-registrations that have grown from 352 in 2012 to 625 in this last edition (2015). On the other hand, we can also see a significant growth in the number of beginners, which has gone from being just a few participants to be 420 in the workshops for beginners 2015. And last but not the least, we can find out the large increase of the audience, that has gone from being around 100 people in the firsts editions of the Festival to be 12.000 spectators in 2015.

Was the impact planned from the start?

From the very beginning the Festival has worked very hard to achieve, little by little, that the three types of targets increased in order to reach this point of union between people and culture. Since its inception, the main objective of the Festival was to develop a deep pedagogical function in the world of dance, in its learning and in its physical and mental training, while offering the possibility of living an amazing experience thanks to the combination of teachers, participants and warmth of Deltebre and its people.

Tell us something about the context

Deltebre has received the Festival Deltebre Dansa from the inception of our project. The Festival had to take place in the idyllic Ebro Delta for its uniqueness. Deltebre is located in the heart of the Ebro Delta (Catalonia). With an area of 320 km2, it is the most important wetland of Catalonia and the second one in the Iberian Peninsula. This city has had a fast development since the opening of the channel of the left side of the Ebro (1912); until then the communications were very deficient. One of its main characteristics is its disperse urban structure, that is being corrected little by little. Deltebre’s main production is rice, although in the last years tourism has become one of the most economic important activities. Its geographical characteristics and its high nature value, both flora and fauna, make this setting a place of special interest because of the encounter with nature and the ideal conditions to develop any type of artistic creations.

Tell us what were your expected results and the actual ones

From the beginning, in each edition the Festival only tried to increase the number of spectators, which in the recent years has increased dramatically. It has been eleven years now since a small idea has managed to attract the attention of thousands of people year after year. On one hand, it is not possible to increase the number of professional participants for the professional workshops, otherwise we could not guarantee the high-level of excellence of these workshops. On the other hand, the Festival has not forced the increase of the workshops for beginners, but the growing demand has come from the population and this has been an entire satisfaction for the Festival and it is for these reasons that in each edition the Festival creates a new opportunity to surprise participants, beginners and spectators with a wide variety of workshops and an innovative and diversified performance programme.

Tell us something about the most relevant resource inputs of your project/action

Deltebre Dansa is a large-scale festival that needs a whole year of preparation and organisation for each edition. As we have said before, we have very few human resources, but we manage to make possible each new edition, also thanks to the help of the helpers and volunteers during the 15 days of the Festival. On the other hand, financial resources are both public and private, as it is the case with the vast majority of the festivals and cultural events.

Tell us how you have attained the main change

In each edition the Festival seeks to improve, on one hand, in order to continue providing excellent training opportunities in the field of performing arts, and on the other hand, to increase the offer of workshops for beginners, and finally, to offer a varied and interesting programme. In each edition we look for new ways to improve the facilities to provide the best experience to everybody. In the last editions we could expand the capacity through the main circus tent, which is now the heart of the Festival. Aiming to offer great artistic value performances for free to approach culture and performing arts to everyone, in the last edition, the Festival Deltebre Dansa implemented a free ticket booking system. This made possible to control the capacity and thereby provide a better service to all spectators. Moreover, in case of full capacity, there was also the possibility to enjoy the performances thanks to an external video screen that streamed the shows. Another important change that has favoured us has been the growing paper of the communication of the Festival. Thanks to the continuous communication efforts, the Festival now appears in multiple mass media that offer us several interviews on local radio and television stations. During the Festival, mass media dedicates us numerous news and after the Festival, they also dedicate us some space in order to evaluate the edition.

Tell us the main area of impact of your project

Deltebre Dansa has a deep impact in several areas:

• It is committed to a strong educational role in performing arts (contemporary dance and circus), where there is a multidisciplinary interaction guided by recognised professionals. Moreover, the Festival has strengthen its cooperation with institutional collaborations in order to promote culture. In this way, Deltebre Dansa promotes new relations between participants and institutions at a national and international level with schools such as FLIC Circus School (Italy), Centre Nacional des Arts du Cirque (France), etc. This training excellence has developed a deep pedagogical function in the world of performing arts.

• Another area of impact of the Festival is its social integration. Deltebre Dansa promotes activities for the therapeutic benefits they provide, as they help people express their feelings and emotions through movement. The Festival has approached the performing arts to citizens through three aspects: free training for all, production with disabled people and creation with elderly people. All of them are taught by professional choreographers and at the end, they create and perform a great final piece that is much appreciated among the audience.

• The broad performance programme has also a large impact in this project and in Deltebre. For 15 days the city becomes a big stage opening new and different doors. This is one of the most important impacts that the Festival has achieved during all these years: changing attitudes thanks to the merge of the educational role of the festival with a performance program of avant-garde, varied disciplines of high quality with free entrance.

• Finally, the Festival also offers a range of opportunities to the local economy. It stimulates local economy by hiring companies from Deltebre and the involvement of businesses by granting them part of the Festival’s enclosure to set up their stands.

All these good impacts have let us been recognized as one of Europe’s finest festivals honoured with EFFE Label 2015/2016. This label recognizes artistic commitment, community involvement and a festival’s international and global outlook.

Which is the Big Idea behind your project/action?

The Big Idea behind the Festival Deltebre Dansa project is to create an open space where different contemporary disciplines and people meet and merge, exploring the essence of the movement to learn and create new forms in an incomparable quality and multiculturalism framework. During 15 days, the Festival Deltebre Dansa becomes the epicentre of the performing arts, but not only this. Thanks to the union of its three facets (the professional workshops, workshops for beginners and the performances programme) and all these located in a unique setting as Deltebre, the Festival manages to create a completely unique experience that produces a great impact in the whole area by turning it into the capital of the performing arts for 15 days. The DNA of Deltebre Dansa is formed essentially by conviviality, creativity and humanity in a high-level context of vocational training inthe performing arts. It is a “glocal” phenomenon, where the mix between global  and local allows conceiving a natural space among people and cultures.

Audiovisuals and more information

For the last years, we have considered vital to capture all this experience in documentaries; experience of participants, teachers and spectators that Deltebre Dansa has been able to capture through the trilogy of the documentaries The ephemeral city (edition 2012), The small revolution (edition 2013) and The journey (edition 2014, about the ten years of the Festival), and through the spots of each edition: “awakening”, “#abagofexperiences” and “#Emotionsinside”. On the trilogy of the Festival’s documentaries, we must underline the good reception that they have had on a local and an international level. The documentaries have been screened at important audiovisual exhibitions like VideoDanzaBa (Argentina) or Curt-Redó Film Festival (Catalonia), and they have also been awarded with prizes like the Deltebre City Council Award 2013 or the Curt-Redó Film Festival 2015 Audience Award. In total, between the three documentaries and the spots there have been more than 23,000 reproductions worldwide. As we said before, in the last editions the Deltebre Dansa has improved its
communication efforts and in this way we can find its official web and social networks (Facebook and Twitter) updating.

As a summary, we compile some figures of this last edition 2015:

• 15 days

• 1 circus tent

• 1 unique setting

• 22 teachers

• 14 professional workshops

• 150 professional participants

• 625 pre-registrations

• 7 workshops for beginners

• 420 beginners

• 50 nationalities

• 40 performances of free entrance

• 80 international artists

• 12,000 spectators

• 5,829 Facebook followers

• 773 Twitter followers

• 23,000 reproductions on Vimeo

• 37,000 visits to the web

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