Dance creates encounters without language barriers. Through aesthetic and thematic diversity, dance opens up spaces for social integration and dialogue. Dance stands for the active coexistence of people from different cultural and social backgrounds and generations. Dance has the extraordinary potential to strengthen social cohesion in both urban and rural areas – on stage, in one's own experience and in dancing together.
Dance artists come from all over the world. Dance is innovative – in performance formats and in dance education. Over 1,000 independent ensembles, artistic collectives and projects work in the independent dance scene. 60 permanent ballet and dance theatre ensembles work at municipal and state theatres. But dance professionals work in precarious conditions, often only with individual project funding without a structural basis. In order to strengthen this large area of dance, the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland has joined forces with strong cultural policy players to form the Initiativgruppe Tanzförderung – Bundesdeutsche Ballett- und Tanztheaterdirektor*innen-Konferenz, Bureau Ritter, K3 – Zentrum für Choreographie | Tanzplan Hamburg, Nationales Performance Netz, nrw landesbuero tanz, Tanzbüro Berlin, TanzSzene Baden-Württemberg. The Dachverband Tanz Deutschland and the Inititativgruppe Tanzförderung are founding the INITIATIVE TANZ together with the sponsors of TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund, NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ and explore dance – Netzwerk Tanz für junges Publikum.
The aim of the INITIATIVE TANZ is,
● to enable participation in dance art and dance culture for diverse communities in urban society
● to create new spaces for dance beyond established venues,
● to build artistic continuity and structures to include other dance cultures in the social dialogue
● to create structures for the sustainable development of dance in the area
● to reach a young, diverse audience with dance.
Implementation is to take place through proven funding instruments in order to
● make dance funding more sustainable and efficient
● enable appropriate and predictable fees for artists
● create stable networks for production and performance
● make dance visible in the long term through more performances and
● reach audiences outside the established cultural sector and beyond urban centres.
The INITIATIVE TANZ is to be implemented via the NPN and TANZPAKT funding models and the expansion of the explore dance network.
The complete concept “Tanzförderung Stadt-Land-Bund” of the Initiativgruppe Tanzförderung.
The The INITIATIVE TANZ emerged from the Stadt-Land-Bund initiative, the first work process of its kind in cultural policy: public sponsors from municipalities, federal states and the federal government are engaged in an intensive exchange of information and experience, and working with dance-scene representatives to develop a national model for the promotion of dance.The dance-promotion initiative group, which has been operating since the spring of 2013, has assembled a working group of experts and directors at specialist units at federal state ministries, at municipalities and at the federal government level, as well as other sponsors and dance-scene experts. The initiative group, which emerged from the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland (Umbrella Association for Dance in Germany / DTD), initially comprised the following members: the DTD, the non-profit agency DIEHL+RITTER gUG (now Bureau Ritter gUG), K3 – Centre for Choreography Hamburg, Tanzbüro Berlin and TanzSzene Baden-Württemberg.
The aim of the Stadt-Land-Bund initiative is nationally co-ordinated dance promotion with a focus on quality and international reach. The initiative links the funding potentials of federal states and municipalities, and enhances them with an efficient, long-term funding instrument at the federal government level.
The promotion programme TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund is the result of this continuous exchange and an important milestone in it.
In May 2014, the umbrella organisation Tanz Deutschland and the Akademie der Künste invited participants for the first time to a round table on “dance funding” – a highlight for the cultural policy dialogue on dance. This meeting brought all three funding levels - municipalities, states and federal government – into direct exchange and demonstrated a fundamental consensus for strengthening dance. The cultural policy initiatives that followed led to a much higher visibility of dance, to many initiatives for dance at the local and regional level. Further meetings in this format took place in 2016, 2019 and 2023. They marked the start and further development of cooperative urban-rural-federal dance funding, especially in the funding programme TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund.