Here is some feedback shared by DÆNCITY participants in a debriefing questionnaire :

Question 1 :

The DÆNCITY residency is :

Blue : Simply great, all EPFL/UNIL students should have access to such an experience at least once during their university studies

Red : Interesting, but I don’t see what sense it makes to set up such a project within the EPFL/UNIL context

Yellow : A waste of time for the students and a waste of money for the EPFL 

Question 2 : The skills and reflexions developed during the DÆNCITY project are :

• Useful for my student life (57,9%)
• Useful for my (future) professional activity (47,4%)
• Useful for my personal life (94,7%)
• Of no real use in any of these three areas (0%)

On the residency

“It was an extremely enriching week at all levels. In my personal life I learned to take a distance, to move out of my comfort zone, to focus on myself at the same time as staying connected to the group. Those are things I can project on my professional life in order to find my place and make my voice be heard.” 

“For my student life : an extraordinary way of meeting other students. We created strong relationships during this residency. This experience brought up a lot of questions concerning my future choice of career. I wish to leave a lot of space for movement and dance. I want them to be an important part of my professional activity”.

“For my professional activity : tools to form a group”.

“Reflections had already emerged within me before DÆNCITY (transposing what one learns in dance, what one experiences in dance – relating to the world – the way I perceive myself in society). Formulating and experiencing it again (beyond the weekly course) was rich.  What was most rewarding : really feeling how much academic studies lack movement, and how much collectivity is a source of inspiration, care, play and joy.”

“Understanding one’s limits and those of other people. Learning to be in a group and GETTING TO KNOW EACH OTHER through dance. Bonding. Leaving all judgement aside. Feeling supported and surrounded in this quest for meaning and creativity. Awaking the source within me. Cultivating the idea of a desirable professional life.” 

“For my student and professional life, Dæncity enabled me to develop my creativity and my capacity to manage stressful situations with more resilience. For example, I feel more at ease with oral presentations, for which I now don’t need to read from a paper anymore. As for my personal life, I appreciated the group athmosphere which allowed me to create strong ties. This has also been beneficial for my health and self-esteem.”

“The fact that we mixed with people of the same age and that we reflected on ideas together brought back hope for the future, on a personal level as much as in my student life. I hope to be able to keep these discoveries in my future professional life, but being confronted to such a big group also showed me how much it is possible to achieve together, and that is really reassuring and allows a big intellectual emulation.”

“Learning to create collectively, and having a lot of freedom in everything we did.”

“I liked everything ! The two teachers, Noémie and Matthieu are great ! They organized this week in such a professional way. It was diverse, well built, we set up a performance so quickly. It was amazing ! Total trust, everything went smoothly ! Warm-ups, games, techniques, creating images together. It was all great !

“Dæncity allowed me to experiment a prototype of microsociety, to experiment (or to remember) forgotten ways of living together. This brought lots of hope, and makes me want to reproduce parts of this model in my professional life and in my workplace. Furthermore, in an engineering culture marked by dematerialization and distance, the personal work on the body that Improgineering and Dæncity have offered, strengthen my conviction that projects, such as digital ones, which claim to change society for the better by introducing more distance, and ignoring that we are socially situated bodies, present serious limits. The failure of the metaverse is, I believe, a perfect example of this. How many billions could be saved by having students who are better educated on the subject and on what’s at stake ?”

“To observe, listen, communicate, being aware of oneself and of the others, the “I messed up !” exercise, movement, attention, reaching compromises, daring, pursuing something to the end, creating surprise and being surprised, letting go, giving it all, paying attention to one’s limits, creating… (amongst others) all this will be extremely useful in all areas of my life.”

“The athmosphere was excellent, a wonderful way to get to know each other.”

“For me, the group was the most beautiful thing during this process. Everyone was very open, easy-going, very authentic. If some time alone was needed, the others respected that.”

“I had to make a considerable effort to adapt to so much information and new things all at once. Fortunately, the people in the group were all great and a very natural trust quickly emerged. However, I regret that the only common time off we had were the mealtimes (again a context of sensory overload and temporal urgency). I believe it would be interesting to conceive a programme that is precisely less “EPFL”, in the sense of breaking codes of what a “full” day means, and according value to moments that don’t have any in the eyes of the academic system (and the professional life that follows).”

“I felt a strong symbiosis within the group, although I didn’t have the feeling of knowing everyone well – in the classical sense of “knowing” someone – beyond the residency context. I believe that’s one of the strengths of this residency.”

“Movement, life ! Creation ! Collectivity ! It’s full of vibrations and it feels good !”

“One should be able to pursue such projects […], they’re important to us. Feeling good, feeling pleasure, HAVING FUN (very important), and sharing messages.”

“Let’s dance ! Let’s shout and sing ! Let’s laugh ! Let’s dance some more and create, to change and move forward, to move on to something good !”

On the public presentations

“The simple fact of having 3 performances at different times, allowed us to keep in touch with the rest of the residency members : it was so nice to meet up again each time and I have the feeling it made our relationships even stronger. Many of the workshops would loose sense if we didn’t create a performance: all the advice related to projection, to being present, etc. would just be theory if it can’t be tested on a public. Beyond this, it’s just so cool to be on stage and to perform, it feels so incredibly good and one enters the group energy with so much more intensity in this situation than when doing an exercise.” 

“We give something we received. The group spirit is exacerbated. An intense and significant way of wrapping up the week.” 

“I liked the challenge of the public performance, I was a little afraid, but in the end I loved being on stage. The group also made it easy, it was interesting to observe that the kindness between us was perceived by the members of the public and that it made them want to participate.” 

“They set a goal and an end to the residency. They are the accomplishment of the work we provided during the residency.”

“It was a beautiful conclusion, and also a way of showing and motivating other people to experiment such events.”

“It’s thanks to these performances that we can show what happened during one week of our lives. It’s a little insight onto our emotions, the energy and the comradeship that was created. Furthermore, the reflective process, although it sometimes seemed slightly far-fetched and somewhat off-topic, was interesting to have and to share in order to move (at a small scale) the world around us.”

“It allowed us to create cohesion and common excitment which brought us closer, motivated and guided us all through the residency (as a guideline). The public performances were also incredible moments and the opportunity to mellow the end of the residency, and to meet up again.” 

“Its’ the climax, the accomplishment towards which we work, and even if the process is more important thant the goal, it gives us a direction and structures us. It also allows for a bridge to be built between the group and the outside world.”

“So great to finish with a creation ! Since all residencies happen to have an “end”. The process is no doubt important, probably most important, and yet, the performances were essential for accomplishing everything we experienced and created. To be able to give a final touch, to get together, to shine together. And being on stage is sooooo nice ! Performing in front of people AND ESPECIALLY SHARING what we experienced ! Reflections, learning, evolution. SHARING A MESSAGE ! Through artistic creation and movement ! It’s awesome !”