Fostering & Experimenting
The context program seeks to spotlight relations and practices of fostering and experimentation within the context of a dance landscape that «just as society is shifting, dance too insists on questioning, stretching, and remaking itself» (extract from the Jury Statement 2026).
What does it mean to foster experimentation? In the face of increasing precariousness within «institutional» dance, fostering can take on a new meaning. To forget our ways of productive precarity and forge a way for holding continuous space for experimentation.
The context program for the Swiss Dance Days 2026 tries to reflect the deeply ambitious nature of the works selected. It aims at creating a dialogue around what conditions it takes for such work to be produced – institutionally, artistically and personally. In talking about the precarity that dance and the performing arts face today, we address strategies artists and institutions have conceived in order to look at their communities and see how exactly they can hold each other.
It is an invitation to reflect, not only on personal preferences, but also on broader perspectives and implicit frameworks that shape how we, as a dance scene, understand movement, innovation, and artistic relevance. These questions concern artists, audiences and institutions alike, and they call on us to approach them collectively.
From embodied practices to intellectual discussions – the context program offers spaces for everyone to withdraw, connect, question and strategize.
Curated by Tejus Menon, Tina Odermatt and Nina Richard