As one of the many grass-root artistic initiatives that make up Berlin’s vibrant and internationally renowned independent dance scene, we would like to express our concern in the face of the announced budget cuts in Berlin’s public arts funding. We feel it is necessary and urgent to emphasise a perspective that has been completely invisible in the ongoing discussion: dance and performance artists and their particularly precarious working conditions in Berlin.
Berlin has art galleries and museums for the visual arts, concert halls for music, and theatres for drama and opera. Unlike these art disciplines, and unlike many other cities known for culture, there is no public institution for dance in Berlin. While the city has several national theatres all of which are funded with millions of euros, choreographers and dancers have to work without any comparable supportive infrastructure. Because of this situation they have to work from project to project. All of these projects are realised via public project funds.
It is with great concern and anxiety that we read that these already (in comparison) small funds are now to be cut by 14% (we read that €500,000 is to be cut from €3.3 million fundings for theater AND dance)! This would mean that the funding that is the heart of artistic production is cut even more than the big institutions! What is a very small amount to consolidate a €5 billion debt means a lot of grants, projects funded and ideas realised. This is increasing the precariousness of dance artists to a point where it would not be possible to continue to work.
If public funding for artistic production is cut, this will TERRIBLY DAMAGE the Berlin dance scene!
With Flutgraben Performances we have been working with choreographers and dance artists for over ten years. We organise events to present new work, provide space for dance artists to produce it and host a community to discuss it. Together with other initiatives, we are the backbone of the Berlin dance scene. We already had to deal with dramatically insufficient funding, as every Senate jury reports every year. If this already low funding is reduced even more, we lose our basis to create art and Berlin will lose what it is famous for.
Dance artists show their work in Sophiensaele, HAU, Tanzfabrik, Dock 11, and other places.. None of these venues have proper production budgets. It is the artists themselves who have to organise production money from somewhere else for their projects to be able to present them in the existing infrastructure. If public project fundings are lowered even more, dance artists will not be able to produce any work and there will be no shows in theaters.
We raise our voices against cuts in public funding; funding is the only possibility to allow for artistic production, research and rehearsal spaces. Cutting these funds will not bring substantial savings on a city level but it will cause devastating and irreversible damage to dance as an artform in Berlin.
As cultural senator Joe Chialo himself said at a recent discussion at the Schaubühne: the independent art scene does not cost a lot of money for the benefit it brings to the city. We agree. But the dramatically underfinanced independent art scene and dance in particular is very fragile. Dance has no home base and can therefore be easily destroyed.
We see currently a lot of discussions about the importance of cultural institutions and we support the fight against cuts in their budgets, too. But the dance scene in this city does not have any institutions at all. Dance productions need public project fundings to be able to create. We ask you to be aware not to irreversibly destroy one of the city’s greatest artistic assets.
Flutgraben Performances is an artist-run initiative for research, production and presentation of dance and body-based art, currently directed by the choreographers Clément Layes, Moritz Majce and Adam Man.
