International Dance Day
Encyclopedia
International Dance Council
The International Dance Council is an umbrella organization for all forms of dance in the world. It is a non-profit international non-governmental organization founded in 1973 within the UNESCO headquarters. Its headquarters are in Paris...
(CID), an umbrella organization
Umbrella organization
An umbrella organization is an association of institutions, who work together formally to coordinate activities or pool resources. In business, political, or other environments, one group, the umbrella organization, provides resources and often an identity to the smaller organizations...
within UNESCO for all kinds of dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
.
The holiday was introduced in 1982 by the International Dance Committee of the UNESCO International Theatre Institute. The date was suggested by Pyotr Gusev
Pyotr Gusev
Pyotr Andreyevich Gusev was a ballet dancer, teacher and choreographer. He was born on 29. December, 1904 in St. Petersburg. He studied at the St. Petersburg School of Choreography under Alexandr Shiryayev. He was a friend of George Balanchine and joined his Young Ballet group. He graduated in...
to commemorate the birthday of Jean-Georges Noverre
Jean-Georges Noverre
Jean-Georges Noverre was a French dancer and balletmaster, and is generally considered the creator of ballet d'action, a precursor of the narrative ballets of the 19th century...
.
Among the goals of the Dance Day are to increase the awareness of the importance of dance among the general public, as well as to persuade governments all over the world to provide a proper place for dance in all systems of education, from primary
Primary education
A primary school is an institution in which children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as primary or elementary education. Primary school is the preferred term in the United Kingdom and many Commonwealth Nations, and in most publications of the United Nations Educational,...
to higher
Higher education
Higher, post-secondary, tertiary, or third level education refers to the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology...
.
While dance has been an integral part of human culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
throughout its history, it is underprioritized by official establishments in the world. In particular, Prof. Alkis Raftis, President of the International Dance Council, in his 2003 Dance Day Message said: "In more than half of the 200 countries in the world, dance does not appear in legal texts (for better or for worse!). There are no funds allocated in the state budget to support this art form. There is no such thing as dance education, private or public."
The year 2005 focus of the Dance Day was on primary education. CID urged dance establishments to contact the Ministries of Education with the proposals to celebrate this day at all school
School
A school is an institution designed for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is commonly compulsory. In these systems, students progress through a series of schools...
s with writing essay
Essay
An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...
s about dance, drawing
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
dance pictures, dancing in the streets, etc.
The 2006 message of President of CID addresses the reluctance of dancers to join collective organisations, expresses an opinion that this is a major reason of the lack of the due recognition (legislation, financing, visibility) of dance in society, and calls: "Dancers of the world, unite!"
The 2007 Dance Day was dedicated to children.
In 2008, Alkis Raftis circulated an e-mail which said, in part: "Governments, sponsors, and the media is our main concern this year. Governments (national, regional or local), sponsors (private or public) and the media (newspapers, magazines, radio, TV) are the three most
important factors affecting the practice of our art. Dance professionals
struggle to approach them individually - with poor results. We propose a
better way: through CID Sections representing all forms of dance, all
levels, all functions"
In 2010, Prof. Alkis Raftis, President of the International Dance Council CID, UNESCO, Paris, wrote:
The United Nations proclaimed 2010 as International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures and designated UNESCO as lead agency in this celebration, having regard to its experience of more than 60 years in advancing the mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples.
Irina Bokova, the new Director-General of UNESCO, has proposed a universal vision, which she has called the “new humanism”; a vision open to the entire human community, providing a humanist response to globalization and crisis, aiming at the safeguarding of social cohesion and the preservation of peace.
Dance, being a central part of every culture, constitutes the ideal means for bringing together people from different countries.
Festivals promote in the most lively manner reciprocal knowledge and respect of diversity; there are hundreds of millions attending international dance festivals each year.
Teachers offering classes in foreign countries provide immediate bridges of understanding ingrained into the bodies of dancers; there are tens of thousands of dance teachers crossing national borders yearly.
Congresses and open conferences provide opportunities to showcase one's work to an audience of peers; there are dozens of international meetings of dance researchers, historians and critics in any given year.
Even outside festivals, classes or conferences, simply watching on television a dance from a foreign country offers the most striking, appealing and convincing image of another ethnic group.
Dance is Haram in Islam, and Dance is considered as sin in Islam.
For vividly illustrating cultural diversity, for embodying rapprochement, there is no better means than dance.