Chilean contemporary dance is growing nowadays. Some of the factors that have enriched the national dance scene have been a greater awareness of its needs, a diversification of artistic languages and stagings, more spaces and festivals that include dance and the creation of new careers in universities. On the other hand, the lack of audiences, self-management problems, centralization, few studios and specific postgraduate programs continue to be obstacles to be overcome.
Chile has a big geographic and cultural diversity, this means that there is a broad and varied artistic production all over the country. Even with this development, Chile still concentrates the majority of its resources and spaces in the capital, Santiago. The City of Valparaíso, the second cultural centre in Chile, has increased its interest in fomenting art and culture after becoming a World Heritage. On top of that, the Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes was transferred to that city. Nevertheless, Valparaíso has no theatres nor apropriated production levels for big performances.
Teatro a Mil is the main international festival of performing arts in Chile, which includes in its annual programme international quality dance shows. Other festivals with an international program are: Danzalborde (Valparaíso) and DanzaMayor, a festival that has been organized by the Universidad Mayor in the public space of the underground in Santiago; the Festival de Video Danza of the Universidad ARCIS created in 2005 has national and international guests; the Festival de Teatro Físico organized by the Universidad Finis Terrae and the Festival Movimiento 6 organized by the Teatro Camino ( first edition in 2008). On the other hand dance activities try to run the whole year and mainly in the summer seasons.
The festivals that have a national scope are: Feria de la danza and the Día de la danza coordinated by the CNCA - Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes. Apart from that, there are festivals with small scale and short duration works like those that have been organized by the Centro Cultural Nemesio Antúnez and the Espacio Nimiku.
In the near future, Santiago will have an arts space funded by the State with a theatre just for dance. The well equipped dance spaces are concentrated in the capital and the most important ones are: Teatro Mayor, Teatro camino, Teatro Mori, Teatro Universidad de Chile, Teatro Baquedano, Teatro Municipal, Teatro Matucana 100, Teatro Universidad Católica, Sala Isidora Zegers, Teatro Facetas, Teatro Universidad Finis Terrae and Factoría Universidad Arcis, and Teatro San Ginés.
Some independent groups and companies have been able to create their own spaces with a lot of effort, which, even though without the ideal technical infrastructure, help them to perform their work and to consolidate a style. Some examples, all of them in Santiago, are the Galpón Paulina Mellado with emerging contemporary dance performance showings, the Galpón La Vitrina in the space of the Colectivo de Arte la Vitrina, the Galpón 7 and the Espacio Nimiku.
There are more than 15 professional contemporary dance companies in the metropolitan region, which due to the lack of financial resources, had many difficulties to support themselves in the course of time. Even though the present condition of independent companies is precarious, they are in midst of a process which tries to foment and develop professionalization of dance in various areas of action: institutional strengthening, professionalization of independent companies, creation and fomenting of historical and theoretical dance research with new researchers that came up in the last years.
The only contemporary dance company receiving subsidies from the government today is the Ballet Nacional Chileno, the Ballet which belongs to the Universidad de Chile, created in 1945 and which has also a contemporary creation production nowadays.
The Chilean companies that can be highlighted due to their history and research in renovation of languages are: Colectivo la Vitrina, the only company within the most contemporary trend with more than 10 years of existence; Compañía Movimiento, Compañía Pe Mellado, Compañía Danza en Cruz, Compañía Aucabutoh, Compañía de Elizabeth Rodríguez, Compañía Mundo Moebio, Grupo Abundanza and OTUX. We could also stress within the same direction choreographers like Jose Luis Vidal, Claudia Vicuña, Francisca Sazie, Constanza Cordovez and Catalina Mella.
The main Chilean dance class associations are PRODANZA - Colegio de profesionales de danza and the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores SINATTAD. Both try to protect the rights of the dance workers and professionals. Until today there have been no associations of choreographers and the Corporación Danza Chile, which used to take care of dance spaces and festivals ceased to exist in the last years due to lack of direct funding.
There are very few institutional subsidies for independent dance and scarce opportunities for private companies support. The companies manage to survive thanks to government grant funds, like the Fondo de Desarrollo de la Cultura y las Artes (FONDART) which allows for the funding of creation, research, events and touring of pieces nationally and regionally.
For tours of Chilean companies abroad, there are also government grant funds that may be applied for at the DIRAC - Dirección de Asuntos Culturales, an institution which depends on the Ministry of Foreign Relations. The DIRAC issues grants for national artists tours abroad, cultural diplomatic activities and residencies for dancers and choreographers.
The international cooperation agencies were crucial in the eighties for the beginning of contemporary dance, mainly the Instituto Chileno Norteamericano, the Instituto Chileno Francés and the Goethe Institut. Thanks to them, important personalities of the international contemporary dance scene came to Chile and Chilean artists managed to participate in festivals abroad especially the American Dance Festival. Nowadays there is very little support from these institutions and there is no economical support or scholarships for the creation and training of contemporary dancers. Nevertheless, the Goethe and the Centro Cultural de España, mainly, usually make their spaces available for independent dance.
Chile has been constantly concerned with cultural policies, the document “Chile quiere mas cultura” (Chile wants more culture) establishes an increase in the budget for culture for 2010 to 1% of the national budget, which is a great progress.
The CNCA - Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes is the body responsible for the development of national arts. Through its dance department it foments the artistic development and the maintainance of dance, with a policy for mixed funding with subsidies and government grant funds (FONDART). Nowadays the dance community is working towards the future creation of a Dance Council.
The state is promoting the production of cultural industries, improving new relationships between the arts and private companies through the Corporación de Fomento (CORFO) and the Servicio de Cooperación Técnica (SERCOTEC)
In the last years there has been a strong concern to think about dance, incorporating studies, analysis and criticism of national work. In that way, a theoretical and research line has been created by professionals who belong to social and human sciences, who have been able to consolidate work together with dancers and choreographers. Even with this initial theoretical work going on, Chile still lacks a consistent editorial production in terms of dance. As to the written press and the communication media, there is no specialized criticism thinking about the national production.
Impulsos, www.cnca.cl/impulsos/ is the only web platform for contemporary dance in Chile. It has become an important communication and diffusion media for the national dance activities.
Other blogs created by companies and dance theoreticians which are the first efforts to create criticism and thought on contemporary dance are:
Compañía Caída Libre http://ciacaidalibre.blogspot.com Video Danza y Nuevos Medios, http://www.danzavirtual.cl Compañía de Danza la Vitrina,http://www.danzalavitrina.cl Colectivo Teórico Las.Post, http://postdance.wordpress.com/ Maria José Cifuentes, academic http://www.ladanzadeterpsicore.blogspot.com/ Compañía Danza en Cruz http://ciadanzaencruz.blogspot.com/ Compañía Abundanza http://www.abundanza.cl/Home.html Espacio Nimiku, http://infoespacioartenimiku.blogspot.com/
It is worth mentioning the Proyecto RAM http://www.proyectoram.cl/ an initiative of Constanza Cordovez . It is one of the most important actions for the maintainance of contemporary dance records. This Web page hosts an important part of the national companies and the work of famous choreographers and can be used as a platform with crucial information to be consulted abroad.
The first historic book about national dance was published in 2007; Historia social de la danza en Chile; visiones, escuelas y discursos 1940-1990, by María José Cifuentes published by LOM Ediciones. Unfortunately there are still not in Chile other texts published on dance even with a lot of research in due course, like the ones of Lorena Hurtado and Gladis Alcaino. The need to increase the national theoretical panorama motivated the creation of the so call Grupo de Investigadores de la Danza.
Nowadays there are in Santiago nine universities which include the dance career and one in Valparaíso, apart from a great number of dance schools and independent spaces in which dancers and choreographers are trained. All universities include contemporary dance in their curriculum with techniques like butho, release, and contact in the general training. The most important ones are the Universidad de Chile, Universidad ARCIS and Universidad Academia de Humanismo Cristiano (former Espiral).
The increase of private universities developing dance careers generated a new concern as to the work market for their students. That is why some of them are envisaging the creation of institutional dance companies like at the Universidad Arcis and the Universidad Mayor.
The first vanguards which started the phenomena of the Chilean contemporary dance developed in the seventies. The arrival of the military coup in 1973 provoked the breakdown of official cultural companies and institutions starting thus the proliferation of independent companies with new ideas in terms of dance languages, with more experimentation distancing themselves from the modernity models. In the eighties contemporary dance is absorbed by the universities, professionalizing the new languages that had been imported from abroad.
Text written by : Maria José Cifuentes and Simón Perez in collaboration with the Grupo de Investigadores de la Danza, October 2007