Its main focus is on dance in later life, both professionally and socially. Also the transmission of dance heritage, through the review and re-signification of all the heritage and knowledge accumulated by this discipline. Thus, its aims and objectives are organised around three areas of action:
Dance On for an ageless Europe of movement
Pass On for a Europe that values dance heritage
Dream On for a Europe where every body matters
DOPODO 2 makes a priority within the European support bases to which it subscribes, firstly, of the mobility and visibility of artists and creations on a trans-European level, and secondly, the preservation and transmission of European dance heritage. It is led by DIHEL and RITTER from Berlin, Germany, and, in addition to Mercat de les Flors, involves ten European public and private dance institutions from Denmark, Holland, Serbia, Ljubljana, Great Britain, Greece and Belgium.
The project at the Mercat
The DOPODO project ended in April 2024. With the support of DOPODO, Mercat de les Flors has been able to develop especially the projects of Deborah Hay’s Constellation, Mal Pelo’s Bach Project and Lucinda Childs’ Constellation. Also the constellations of Olga Mesa and Francisco Ruiz de Infante, and Lia Rodrigues and Brasil Next organised transmission-based activities included in the DOPODO project.
The format and concept of Constellations has received the recognition and interest of many European structures as a unique model for the visibility of dance heritage, to broaden the information we have about the works and choreographers and to highlight the value of a thought and discipline that has specific characteristics that are no less relevant.
Taipei NTCH and the Mercat de les Flors promote an exchange project for artist residencies. Roser Lopez Espinosa traveled to Taipei in 2022 to meet the dancers and creators of the city’s dance community, and the Taiwanese artist Lin I-Chin met with artists from the Catalan community in the same year. In the second exchange Roser López met the Taiwanese choreographer and dancer CHEN Wu-Kang, and during the month of October 2023 the Mercat invited him to work with Roser and started a process of experimentation and research.
Dancing Museums is a European action research project designed to foster and sustain long-term collaborations between dance organisations, museums, universities and local communities to develop inspiring and long-lasting arts and cultural programs in which people from these communities want to get involved.
Mercat de les Flors is one of the structures participating in the second edition of Dancing Museums, and proposes the participation and complicity in this project to the Fundació Miró and the artist Quim Bigas. Bigas was working on the project in the period 2019-2021 within the framework of residencies and research at Joan Miró Foundation.
On December 4, 2019, we organized a workshop-meeting as a result of a collaboration with the Danish school KaosPilot through which 5 students from the CREATIVE LEADERSHIP program, together with Frank Nesi as facilitator of the process, were in Barcelona from October to December 2019 working on a pilot project of the Mercat de les Flors around ephemeral constructions, dance, architecture and thought.
Choreographers and architects participated in this workshop, and we worked on the possibility of a programming/festival around these contents.
You will find information on this website created by KAOSPILOT about this event and investigation:
Creation of spaces for meeting, experimentation and growth for Catalan and Chinese artists. The project with West Kowloon from Hong Kong lasted three years and involved choreographers Raquel Klein and Javier Guerrero from Barcelona, as well as Rebecca Wong and Mou Wei from Hong Kong. In 2021 we develop the third leg of this adventure.
