“Compass is where curiosity and generosity meet”
With last week’s launch of the Compass website and events already taking place, it is the perfect time to hear from ilDance Artistic Director Israel Aloni on how they see the emerging initiative.
This is part one of a two-part interview, which was originally released in ilDance’s monthly newsletter.
Now that Compass is very much up and running, how do you envision the coming months as this initiative becomes a reality?
Israel Aloni: The launching of the site was one, although very significant, but one milestone in the realisation of Compass. Compass very much depends on community and depends on the individual young and emerging artists in the communities across Sweden but also are willing to offer some kind of support and assistance to the artists in their community.
So we need to start gathering, networking and connecting. Networking, not so much in terms of promotion but in creating ties that will then be utilised as a support mechanism, that is necessary for these young artists when they come up with ideas to create new work.
We are now starting to meet organisations, which for us can be anything from formal organisations to local stakeholders and private businesses, it can also be a local gallery or museum, that will together create a sort of consortium, which young and emerging artists can approach with ideas.
Israel Aloni working with young artists
ilDance will provide the artistic mentorship and support, while local organisations will offer their resources, whether it be space, networking, marketing, or even moral support.
We’re starting these grassroots initiatives, where local artists can meet someone to inspire them but also support them in their ideas. We start with events in Västra Götaland but then we go out on this tour of meeting stakeholders in the communities, to listen and learn about what is out there and how we as Compass can get involved.
For anyone thinking of going to these upcoming events, what is the mindset you would like to see them go into them with?
IA: Curiosity and generosity. Compass is a very specific layer we are working on that will be a blanket network across the country, where curiosity and generosity meet in order to make it possible for people to make a leap from just being interested in dancing or making dance to actually believing in the potential to make some kind of career or artistic practice from their passion for dance.
In many ways, we speak about Compass as a movement, which is a very nice word as it means a lot of different things, but also a socio-political movement, where we gather people and organisations to support young and emerging artists – to invest in the present, so the future will be possible.
It is about making youth believe and become artists. It does not matter where they come from in the country, what kind of socio-economic background they come from, they can find their artistic practice and they can start now, when they are 15 or 16, wherever they live and whatever other interests or obligations they have in their lives, they can find a way to develop a practice.