“The audience is hungry for pieces like this”
Dance for toddlers, performance art for babies, contemporary stage dance for teenagers. Dance appears to be a particularly suitable art form for plays for young people and especially for children. There have been pieces for the very young for 30 years. About the power of sensuality without words and the socio-political force behind it.
Rita Argauer | 10. September 2024
As part of the 10th festival edition of THINK BIG!, an international symposium on the topic of ‘Dance from the very beginning’ was held in Munich at the beginning of June. As an introduction to the topic of early childhood, scientist Sabine Hattinger-Allende from the University of Duisburg gave an exciting keynote speech on a critical view of motherhood and childhood in the context of social change.
The two dance producers Claire Summerfield from England and Saskia Wieringa from Norway were also invited to give insights into artistic and production practice in the field of dance for a very young audience. A moderated discussion with dance journalist Elisabeth Nehring led to a joint exchange with dance professionals (Ceren Oran, Alfredo Zinola, Takeshi Matsumoto, Ute Schmitt, Dörte Wolter) and the participants. The visitors to the symposium came from many different areas: Artists and educators, dramaturges, representatives from cultural policy and cultural administrations. The focus here was on knowledge exchange and networking among the participants.
What does a look at artistic practice in this country reveal?
In Munich, the Bavarian State Ballet and the Bavarian State Opera share a theatre. And while opera performances are attended by an audience that, in most cases, corresponds very closely to the outward appearance of an opera audience, the audience of the Bavarian State Ballet differs significantly. Even for a large classical institution like the Bayerisches Staatsballett, the dance audience is different. A younger one.
A look at a festival of the independent scene, also in Munich: ‘Think Big!’ Contemporary dance for a young audience. Also works splendidly. Teenagers and even younger children find surprisingly direct access to an art form whose contemporary variant is often considered very unwieldy, very abstract, very niche-orientated.
‘Dance touches us on an emotional level,’ says Simone Schulte-Aladag, director of the Think Big Festival and founding member of the Germany-wide network explore dance – dance for young audiences. Giving people access to the art of dance and dancing for themselves as early as possible and at an early age is no longer a matter of course in society. Bringing dance to schools and daycare centres has been the idea of the Fokus Tanz association since 2006. Experiencing dance as a stage art is also made possible by a festival such as Think Big! or the explore dance network, which launches dance pieces for young audiences throughout Germany.
Dance as an art form, as a stage art, is exciting from a purely structural point of view. On the one hand, dance is the most abstract form of the performing arts. Dance works without words, without concrete meanings. At the same time, however, dance is the most direct, most sensually effective form of the performing arts.
Next angle: Kuckuck, a theatre festival for very young children in Munich. The 2019 edition featured a play for babies aged four months and over. To put it more poetically, as in the description of the play: ‘Dance for all those who can’t walk yet.’ But four months is even before crawling age. That’s before sitting age. From a purely physical point of view, children are just trying to turn themselves round. Cognitively, being at this age is not yet separated from the mother (or the closest carer). How can an art form function at this age that relies so heavily on a counterpart as theatre, or rather the performing arts as such? A counterpart who stands on a stage as a mirror, as an object of identification or association? The baby doesn’t care about that at first. It is significant that this piece, ‘Lumi’ the title, was a kind of dance piece. It worked with sensory impressions, with soft furs on the floor, with light and with sound. And with movement. Because these are all things that even the youngest children can perceive. And their perception gets caught up in them.
Dansens Hus Oslo is Norway’s theatre for contemporary dance. And here, too, they try to put on at least six productions for children every year, in the age groups 0 to three years, three to six years, for six+ year olds and then for 18+. In 2023, there were even ten productions for a young audience, with almost 40 per cent of the entire programme aimed at a young audience. Think Big! also had a play for under-fours in 2022 with ‘we touch we play we dance’ and another for this very young target group in 2024 with ‘Origami Club’.
‘The play is a great opportunity for young children to experience dance, music and movement with all their senses and to feel the energetic, positive atmosphere in the room, the community,’ says Simone Schule-Aladag about “we touch we play we dance”. After this experience, she did a lot of research on the effect of the perception of dance and music performances on very young children. It is striking how even very young children immediately sense when they are allowed to take part in a non-narrative stage play, when they are spectators.
Pieces for very young children show performance art in a very sensual way. ‘I am therefore fascinated by the fact that these works inspire and stimulate children and adults alike. This performance is accessible to everyone at a low threshold,’ says Schulte-Aladag. In 2024, as part of the Think Big! – Festival, as a lot of experimentation and research has already been carried out in other countries in particular. The explore dance network, which currently shows pieces from the age of five, can also imagine targeting even younger audiences in the future.
Where it came from
Dance for very young children has its origins in the late 1990s. With the ‘Klangfugl’ project, choreographer Leif Hernes and educator Ellen Os investigated how art can be created for babies and toddlers, but also how it is experienced by children. The result was that even the youngest children were able to perceive art as art, that they have a certain attention span for it and can also enjoy the art as long as the performance communicates with them and the intention behind it remains clear. ‘Klangfugl’ then became the international project “Glitterbird – Art for the very young” and created 17 projects for babies in Italy, France, Hungary, Denmark, Finland and Norway.
Sound and movement as means of expression
Communication is a key word here. After all, very young children do not yet communicate using language. However, movement and sound are means of expression that young children are very familiar with. And also the connection between sound and movement, for example when young children unconsciously start to turn when they hear music.
Dance maker Claire Summerfield also talks about sensitising artists to a young, diverse audience. However, her experience of artistic production with and for a neurodiverse audience reveals a completely new focus for her. The piece development of the British company Second Hand Dance is already investigating the effectiveness of performances that focus on the opportunities for autistic children to participate.
‘The sensuality of early childhood consists above all in a very physical, but also mental and spiritual touching and being touched by those who care for the child,’ explains childhood researcher Sabine Hattinger-Allende. She sees dance as a way of giving expression to this sensory experience, especially for children who are not (yet) able to speak, and thus conveying it culturally. For Hattinger-Allende, this extends into a (socio-)political dimension when she sees children and those who care for them in this society as being threatened by invisibilisation and devaluation due to a lack of resources in care work. Children and those who care for them find themselves in a kind of social in-between space: ‘I believe that art, and in particular performative art, dance, could give this “in-between” an aesthetic expression and thus make it visible and accessible as a cultural form,’ she explains.
And it works. The children’s plays by explore dance, at the Norwegian Dansens Hus and the productions at the Kuckuck and Think Big! festivals have been very well received. ‘The audience was hungry for such plays’, is how Saskia Wieringa from the Norwegian Dansens Hus puts it simply and directly.
