email to the community

Dear,

I am working on a research project called 'B-Chronicles,' by Sarma, the online platform for dance criticism ( www.sarma.be ) , and I am contacting you to ask for an interview.

B-Chronicles encompasses various activities and emanations, including sociological research, an online forum and text laboratory, and a series of events. The central question of the research is the following: How do people live and work in a local dance community, e.g. Brussels, in times of increasing mobility, migration, and transnational production conditions? If 'internationalism' incites indeed a strong phantasmal realm nowadays, what are the reality effects it produces? Which paradoxes linger in the underpinnings of local communities and national cultural policies? Curated by Jeroen Peeters and Myriam Van Imschoot and produced by Sarma vzw in collaboration with Damaged Goods, B-Chronicles will be presented as a critical, artistic, and interactive event during Crossroads, a festival curated by Meg Stuart, which takes place at Volksbuehne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz in Berlin. For this event, on the 16th of December 2006, Sarma collaborates among others with Delphine Hesters (sociologist) , Jorge Leon (visual artist) , Dieter Lesage (writer, critic) and Meg Stuart (choreographer) and myself. A presentation will also be made in Kaaistudios in January 2007 (date TBA) .

My participation in this project is to conduct several interviews with people living in Brussels with varying degrees of relationship to the dance and performance community. I am interested to ask, via interaction with others, what actually constitutes the dance community, what brings people to Brussels for it, and how others perceive themselves within or in relationship to such a community, in order to define and redefine what it is and how it functions. I am interested in the expertise of experience, in what each interviewee's personal relationship to the field and locations within it demonstrates about the community's mythical, virtual, and concrete existence.

The interviews should take about 1to 1.5 hours and will be recorded.

Parts or all of the interview may be used for: sociological research, Sarma's database, a game which tackles the idea of the 'dance community,' and presentations by the collaborators on B-Chronicles in Kaaistudios and Volksbuehne. If you would like all or parts of your interview to remain confidential, please make that clear at any point before, during or after the interview and your request will be respected.

If you are interested and willing to have an interview, please reply directly to me, Eleanor Bauer, at baubau27@yahoo.com and we can schedule an interview at a time between now and December 1 that is possible for us both. I would very much appreciate your participation. If you have any questions about how I found you or why you have been selected for an interview, please do not hesitate to contact me.

You can also help by forwarding this email to your contacts, those living in Brussels who you think would be interested, or interesting, for an interview.

If you would not like to receive any newsletters or invitations from Sarma, please send an email to info@sarma.be , with subject: "write out Sarma." Otherwise, your email address may be added to their database for future events, including the announcement of the B-Chronicles presentations in Berlin and Brussels.

I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Many Thanks,

Eleanor Bauer