In May, the project practice-theatre, curated by If I Can’t Dance with tutor Ian White at the Dutch Art Institute, is traveling to Senegal. practice-theatre is a performance project tutored by Ian White in collaboration with Emma Hedditch and Jimmy Robert, and coordinated by Tanja Baudoin as part of the MFA at the Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem during 2011-2012.

The project seeks to explore how ‘theatre’ can be understood from the position of artistic practice, to experiment with how such a set of interpretations might be of use within it. Each month the project considered, occupied and enacted aspects of theatre and its operations – with what’s done one month mapping onto the next – to consider the positions from which we speak, how we act, and what, through different frames, speaking and action might be.

The trip to Senegal begins with a working period at the ?cole des Sables, a dance company and school for African dance, located in the coastal village of Toubab Dialaw. Here the students will work on developing a model of ‘theatre’ as the group has come to understand it through our work together and develop a series of ‘performances’ through which this model might be demonstrated. practice-theatre then travels to Dakar to meet up with the students of the other two DAI projects and to visit the Dak’Art Biennale. On 14 May, a public presentation of the work of the students is kindly hosted by Raw Material Company, center for art, knowledge and society.

With thanks to guest tutors Emma Hedditch, Jimmy Robert and Myriam van Imschoot.

The practice-theatre students are Mercedes Azpilicueta, Rosie Heinrich, Anna Hoetjes, Eden Mitsenmacher, Lara Morais, Ane Ostrem, Eric Philippoz, Vanja Smiljanic, Marija Sujica, Witta Tjan, Sander UitdeHaag and Mariana Zamarbide.

Read more about practice-theatre here