Video: ERC Project DANCING – Mid-Term Academic Conference Promo – Text Description
This video is a short, two-minute video made for the DANCING mid-term academic conference. The video briefly explains the DANCING project and highlights the collaboration with Stopgap, an inclusive dance company featuring dancers with and without disabilities.
The video begins with a shot of a dancer in a wheelchair rehearsing in a dance studio with a mid-tempo electronic soundtrack with drums behind.
We are shown an image of the logo for the DANCING project with the heading ‘DANCING Mid-Term Academic Conference September 4th, 2023’ and the Maynooth University logo.
Next, we see the Principal Investigator for DANCING, Delia Ferri. In a shot recorded in the same rehearsal space she explains the collaboration with Stopgap Dance Company and the main aims of the project as follows:
“The DANCING project started in September 2020, so we are actually halfway at this juncture. We have a lot of things coming together. We have started this arts-based research, which enhances the participatory part of the project and the collaboration with people with disabilities, artists with disabilities. I’m very excited to have the opportunity to work with Stopgap and they have amazing experience in creating inclusive and accessible performance.
“The project combines, of course, this arts-based research with the socio-legal research, which actually constitutes the main part of the research and we have started publishing the interim results of the project already, which is also very exciting, to see coming to fruition some of the interim findings of the project. What we want to do with the project is re-theorize cultural diversity, as a constitutional principle of the European Union, as encompassing disability.”
As she speaks the video cuts between shots of Delia speaking and wider shots of a dance rehearsal. These wider shots show several dancers rehearsing in the project space. We can see that the dance company features dancers with different disabilities. In one shot we see Delia in the foreground with the choreographer watching the dancers rehearsing. The dance style is contemporary, and in some parts the dancers are all moving simultaneously, while in other parts they dancers are making coordinated but distinct movements from each other.
Next, a cue card appears with the DANCING logo again. This time it includes the full title of the project: Protecting the Right to Culture of Persons with Disabilities and Enhancing Cultural Diversity through European Union Law: Exploring New Paths. This is followed by a cue card that says ‘to register for the conference, or for further details on this project, please email hilary.hooks@mu.ie.
Finally, a cue-card appears showing the DANCING logo along with a European Union flag and the logos for the European Research Council, Stopgap Dance Company, and Maynooth University. Text on the bottom of the screen reads: ‘This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme (grant agreement No. 864182)’.