Alternative Dance Academy derived from a belief that the process of “becoming a choreographer” is a hard-to-frame multi-year endeavor and that – thanks to the ongoing development of dance reflection and practice – there are nowadays a multitude of paths leading to this profession (not necessarily through traditional formal dance education). There are also a multitude of approaches towards dance making (dance-writing / ‘choreo-graphy’) as such. The notorious broadening of the definition of choreography practice is emblematic of the last decades and it requires artists to be aware of many artistic paths and methods of creation and even to be courageously forging paths of their own. The training programme for choreographers needs to encourage reflection and self-reflection on choreography and beyond, for they are the driving forces not only of this art form development but in fact, the engine of the whole Art in its multitude of disciplines and discourses.

However, making the regular, run through the whole year, education possible and accessible for talented dance and choreography artists wasn’t the only value of the project; it was also curating a platform for the peer to peer exchange of information and experiences within the dance community otherwise dispersed throughout Poland. THus it served also an important community-building and community-strengthening program bringing together artists from all over the country for an intense and focused but also often intimate exchange of experiences, often stirring further exciting artistic collaborations among the ADA’s participants.

Within a training programme, international artists and educators representing different branches of the art of dance and related practice shared their creative methods and movement generation strategies of their own invention, often very individual and original. AAT equipped participants with tools also from areas of dramaturgy, writing, light design, historical and theoretical reflection. The program promoted practical knowledge exchange and underlined the importance of the dedicated research-through-practice time crucial for stimulating creativity of young artists. It promoted individual approaches towards art of dance making and encouraged young dance makers and makers-to-be in search for their own artistic language. 

The programme was mapped out as cyclical sets of classes within one year – 6 sessions per year, 30 hours each. Each session took on a form of an intensive lab (a formula widely known in Europe as the coaching project). Each lab was crowned by an open post-workshop showing which took on many different innovative forms, ranging from performances, lectures, through presentations of the creative process at the core of a given workshop, all the way to installations and happenings.

Art Stations Foundation has been granting partial or full scholarships for many young choreographers and dancers each year to accommodate those who otherwise couldn’t have afford to participate in the training.

In all 11 editions of the programme, hundreds of Polish artists have benefited from nearly 60 coaching sessions, amounting to almost 1800 training hours. The Alternative Academy of Dance provided a jumpstart to many of their successful professional careers.