VIBES is a choreographic and audio collective performance, seeking to make hundreds or thousands of people not knowing each other, meet in a shared dance performance, guided through headphones. Each protocol will be designed by a choreographer without any limitation of motor skill, language, culture or geographical distance.

The motivation is to bring contemporary dance to new publics and places. Dance practice is developing and venues have never been so numerous in Europe.

Project objectives

The project will provide opportunities of collective meeting within the sharing of a rich experience. The purpose of this project is to help fill a gap by offering a complete infrastructure, mixing digital and human resources, to open this particular public space. VIBES is a new means for cultural institutions to expand by attracting new audiences.

Our first goal is to involve the audience in a shared participatory dance experience.
Our second goal is to engage in new innovative ways with the audiences through two levers: the media, smartphones; and the venue, the public space.
Our third goal in terms of cultural value is to promote cultural and linguistic diversity since Europe lies in the DNA of the project: VIBES is laureate of the Dansathon 2018, a hackathon mixing dance and new technologies which took place simultaneously in London, Lyon and Liège.

Impact statement

Some VIBES sessions will take place simultaneously in several cities from different European countries. The goal is to bring people together despite distance and frontiers. The participation in a VIBES session will help people to share an experience with those who don’t belong to their usual community. They will get the feeling of being part of a larger community than they thought. VIBES has the potential to create a space and provide the tools for various communities to engage in a shared experience, and to bring feelings upfront. This fosters citizenship and facilitates social cohesion – essential conditions to enable the EU to not only prosper, but to exist.
Outputs
Knowledge will be created for dissemination mainly by the academic partners C-DaRE, ICK and Orbe. This knowledge covers different topics: the creation process (methods, tools and know-how), the experience (innovative format, audience reception), social dimension (community, social dynamics and interactions).

The main expected results are the following:
- The creation of VIBES artistic team mixing 10 artists from five European countries and three different artistic domains: contemporary dance, music and digital arts. The artists will share knowhow, experiences and cultures. They will collaborate to create accessible participative experiences for a wide audience. They will create strong links and gain new opportunities for their careers.
- We also expect an improvement of the economic situation of VIBES artistic team due to new income coming from the organization of VIBES sessions during events and festivals.
- The creation of VIBES community combining VIBES artistic team, the facilitators team and the persons who participated in one or more VIBES session all over Europe. This community will maintain its activity and continue to grow after the project. We expect that VIBES community will organize its own VIBES sessions by using this specific feature offered by the mobile app.
- The renewal of the audience of dance festivals and events. Thanks to a series of events involving a large audience in a series of VIBES sessions, we expect either a growth of the audience of the events organized by VIBES members and also an increase of the audience diversity of these events.