Annual meeting of the IOTPD

The annual meeting of the IOTPD, the International Organization for the Transition of Professional Dancers, took place this year in Amsterdam from 15 to 17 June. The IOTPD is a worldwide network of organisations concerned with retraining dancers. The countries participating in this organisation are Canada, Germany, France, Great Britain, Korea, Switzerland and the United States, presided over by the Netherlands.
The IOTPD has been fighting for years to improve the position of dancers reaching the end of their career. To date, this has taken place through various conferences, surveys and publications. On the IOTPD website, you can read about the activities held in recent years and download various interesting publications.



From left to right:
Tom de Jager (Belgium), Agnès Wasserman (France), Alex Dubé (USA), Amanda Hancox (Canada), César Casares (Spain), Lieke van Campen (Netherlands), Karien van Schaik (Netherlands), Ellen Chambers (UK), Jennifer Curry (UK), Mun Ghy Min (Korea), In-ja Park (Korea), Sarah Guillermin (Switzerland), Paul Bronkhorst (Netherlands), In Young Sohn (Korea) Not in the picture: Sabrina Sadowska from Germany.

Ten different countries attended the annual meeting at the office of the Omscholing Dansers Nederland. Besides the members, there were also representatives from Belgium and Spain.

The IOTPD meeting focused mainly on exchanging experiences and discussing trends in the position of dancers. It is always remarkable that there is a big overlap internationally in the position of dancers, where it concerns careers, career counselling and financial support.
Two years ago, the IOTPD initiated the Philippe Braunschweig Grant. This is a modest study grant for dancers who have had an international career and therefore do not qualify for a regular form of support on ending their career. The grant is named after the founder of the Prix de Lausanne and driving force behind the IOTPD, Philippe Braunschweig, whose name is particularly well-known in the classical ballet world. The IOTPD aims to award this grant every year. The next deadline for grant applications is 15 November 2014.
In the near future, too, the IOTPD aims to stimulate countries to take initiatives related to supporting dancers who are ending their career and having to start a second career.