CCDWP was designed in collaboration with the French dancer & Choreographer Laurence Rondoni. The vision behind it was to establish for the first time in Egypt, a long-term contemporary dance educational program introducing contemporary dance to the local scene, by giving the necessary tools, openings, and perspectives of development to the young generation of artists in Egypt.

CCDWP took place over a period of four years for a promising group of young Egyptian dancers and choreographers at Studio Emad Eddin and Falaki Theatre. The first 3 years were composed of workshops given by international choreographers, dancers, critics, cultural operators who were invited to tutor the participants, based on an intense curriculum set by a specialized dance professional. In the fourth year, the Egyptian participants were given residency opportunities abroad, in collaboration with dance organizations in in France, Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany, and opportunities to perform in Falaki Theatre.

Towards the end of the programme, the participants were divided into dancers and choreographers, and given capacity building Training of Trainers ToT sessions in order to develop a new generation of dance trainers and choreographers in Egypt, to keep the process sustainable for the future. The result was very successful, as several graduates of this programme have become trainers themselves opening up their own studio like Ezzat Ezzat, and others have become acclaimed professional choreographers touring their work in Egypt and abroad like Shaymaa Shoukry, Mounir Saeed, Sherine Hegazy, Mohamed Foad, and Salah El Berouji who was selected by Akram Khan to join his esteemed dance company after seeing him in this programme.

Session 13 – By Mohamed Shafik (Egypt): Shafik endeavoured to give “keys”, his creation keys, by revealing to the students how he uses his imagination by transposing it into images he produces on stage, so that they activate the senses and emotion in everyone. Its relation to movement, the specific movement imbued with the physical theatre, was also discussed.

Session 14 – By Toméo Verges (France): Verges’s artistic work stands on the border between dance and theatre, but the starting point is always the body. It was not a question of following technical courses in this session, but of exploring in the form of a workshop, different relationships and crosses that the body can maintain with dance and theatre. Starting from a basic work which is based on a kinesthetic and sensory exploration, this session offered to explore, starting from the body, the meaning of “the present actor” and to develop and enrich one’s own imagination through improvisation. The objective was rather to open paths than to reach goals, rather to raise questions than to give answers.

Session 15 – By Sandrine Mezonouf (France): The study focused on the “subject”, each student being the object of a definition of self, and of the other for itself and in itself. The subject in his reality of “skeleton body”: bony frame of his being. The situation of the “subject”, the landscape, the place in which it is located, and its situation as a dialogue between its internal and an external framework.

Session 16 – By Benoît Lachambre (Canada): Benoit’s work provides access to the organic and energetic structure of our body through “realeasing” (not “realese technic”) work. This work makes it possible to concretely open certain channels, which are purely physical conduits, to access a liberated movement, an open, radiant body, and to perceive its own states, its own relation to oneself, to the present, to the moment, to others, to the world: sensory or emotional or even intellectual, even political states.

Session 17 – By Jean-Jacques Palix (France): This experimental music workshop was based on discovering relationships with sounds at the meeting point of a diversity of practices (music, sound, voices, poetry, video, radio, performance, chorus).

Session 18 – By Germana Civera (Spain/France): Their methodology depended on a special type of sensitive bodies, sharp listening, and piercing look. All that motivates perception through movement, following this method and allowing various types of movement and many types of presence and different methods to start movement (taking into consideration the driving force whether it was the power of the other or self power, it also takes into consideration different and possible entries to access the space through awareness with outer or inner space and the perception of the materials of those spaces).

Session 19 – By Silvia di Rienzo (Italy): This session taught participants the importance of knowing their tools, their bodies, and how to work to improve it. This was done through exercises of flexibility, opening energy circuits, breathing, resistance and the balance of deep muscle forces.

Session 20 – By Laurence Rondoni (France): In this final session, participants were able to see quality shows, and present in public their study work included in the festival program.

Schedule:
Session 13 – from 10th – 18th of January 2009
Session 14 – from 23rd of February – 5th of March 2009
Session 15 – from 15th – 25th of March 2009
Session 16 – from 4th – 24th of April 2009
Session 17 – from 20th – 26th of April 2009
Session 18 – from 3rd – 19th of May 2009
Session 19 – from 3rd – 8th of July 2009
Session 20 – from 6th – 17th of October 2009