What is IDEA?
“I felt alive. I never felt so alive for months, if not in years!”
FESTIVAL AUDIENCE MEMBER, 2019
IDEA – International Dance Encounter Amman, is a bi-annual international multi-disciplinary dance festival based in Amman, Jordan.
IDEA aims to put Jordan in the global dance scene. It creates bonds between dance professionals from Jordan and abroad.
Through supporting, producing, and presenting works for local emerging artists, together with a network of international and regional partners, IDEA serves as a platform for innovation, experimentation, and continuous development of dance culture in Jordan and beyond.
For 2019, the 1st edition of IDEA presented 9 cutting-edge dance works from home and abroad, including 46 artists coming from 18 different countries.
For 2021, the 2nd edition of the festival has invited 35 artists from more than 10 different countries to Jordan’s stages, outdoor locations, galleries and museums, with a specific focus on inter-cultural understanding and capacity building.
For 2023, for the 3rd edition of the festival, we have brought you more than 50 artists from 25 different countries with a carefully curated program that includes 22 exciting events, such as live performances, artistic residencies, workshops, dance jam, open lab and round-tables.
IDEA is organized and curated by Studio 8, partnering with local, regional and international organizations. Established in 2014, Studio 8 held more than a hundred workshops while organizing and implementing many events, with a focus on creating multidisciplinary dance productions.
“IDEA is Not Just an Event…”
IDEA is an educational platform dedicated to building connections between artists and innovators in Jordan and the world.
We offer year-round learning programmes, incubator programmes, seed funding, direct mentorship, and personalized guidance; working hand-in-hand with artists, makers, performers to develop new and original productions and concepts.
Every year, IDEA commissions or co-commissions established dance creators, performers, collaborators, presenters to create one full-length dance production for the international stage. Through annual production, we strive to provide a creative environment within which dancers, choreographers, musicians, designers could collaborate in producing unique, challenging and diverse works in Jordan, loosing boundaries between artistic labels, in favor of a more open and flexible view toward the art experience.
Long-term Impact
Stage dance will become a recognized profession.
IDEA will continuously offer professional development opportunities to dance artists and choreographers to create work that communicates ideas that are intelligent, courageous and new, with hope that Jordanian dance productions could earn international recognition as well as artistic and commercial success.
We hope that our continuous efforts could contribute to paving the way for building international co-production partners in the future to develop production and education programs for Jordanian professional dance artists. Jordanian dance artists will no longer stay at the receiving end of an international education program. They too, have something to offer. When they are exchanged by theatres or dance companies in a foreign country, the host theatre or dance company can benefit from the impetus provided by the Jordanian artists, who have already acquired far reaching theatrical experience in Jordan and who, in turn, bring their experience as multipliers of the partner country’s theatrical scene.
IDEA 2021
IDEA Festival 2019
