Media Dance + is a European project of didactic innovation aimed at experimenting and researching a new “educational model based on the value of corporeality as a dialogical communicative tool expressing new ways of approaching the teacher-student relationship and on the value of performing arts (Antonacci, Guerra, Mancino, 2015) conceived as languages that are able to foster the development of expressive and creative potential in individuals, relationships, and groups” and the understanding of contemporary issues. It has been developed through an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach that falls in between pedagogy and performing arts and is oriented towards the improvement of the teachers’ quality of life as well as that of secondary school students, and the creation of an interdisciplinary Citizenship Education plan. Through this dual training, addressed both to students and teachers, Media Dance + proposes the experimentation of new didactic methodologies involving expressive, artistic, and creative codes, in order to reflect, discuss, and express personal views on the challenges of the contemporary world.

Media Dance + is the international extension of the project of the same name that started in Italy in 2016 at Lavanderia a Vapore in Collegno, a European dancehouse, in response to a specific need expressed by a group of teachers: to find time, a space and a way to address contemporary issues together with their students in the classroom. In partnership with La Briqueterie- Centre de Développement Chorégraphique National (CDCN) Val-de-Marne, another dancehouse from the EDN network, the Italian experience has been exported and amplified on a European scale and has become an opportunity for discussion and dialogue.

The project provides for the experimentation of this methodology in two school settings within the two countries in question, with the involvement of Liceo Alfieri in Turin and Lycée International in St Germain-en-Laye, through an artist’s residency declined in the school context. This will allow artists working on complex social issues – such as the political value of the body, social responsibility, self-awareness, and interpersonal dynamics – to enter into a relationship with students and teachers, promoting the acquisition of soft skills, the development of a critical, proactive and responsible attitude towards the fruition and production of knowledge, the adoption of an approach open to problem-solving, creativitỳ, self-orientation, and intellectual curiositỳ.