August 2026: From Summer Encounters to Lasting Legacies
August brought together different stages of artistic and project development across IM industries’ work: Waterfronts project reached the end of its two-year journey, Empowering Dancers in Motion concluded its summer phase on the Croatian coast and moved to Zagreb, while a month-long creation process in Zadar culminated in the premiere of Palace of Presence.
Waterfronts: leaving behind a methodology
August marked the official conclusion of project Waterfronts - Waterfront Culture for Resilience Against Climate Change & Eco-Anxiety, co-funded by the European Union, following two years of cooperation between artists, cultural organisations, researchers and waterfront communities in Gothenburg, Lesvos and Zadar-Bibinje.
Throughout July and August, an online campaign revisited the artistic works, processes and experiences developed across the three locations, bringing the project’s artistic works into public view as it approached its formal conclusion. The campaign reached audiences in more than 12 EU countries and generated over 2 million views, significantly extending the visibility of the project beyond the three participating waterfront communities.
Yet Waterfronts was designed to leave behind more than documentation of completed activities. One of its central outcomes is the publicly available Waterfronts Toolkit, which translates the experience of working across three different coastal contexts into a practical and adaptable methodology for artists, cultural organisations, municipalities and community groups.
Built around the relationship between art, science and care, the Toolkit offers practical steps, workshop formats and implementation tools while making an important distinction between methodology and replication: the aim is not to reproduce the activities developed in Sweden, Greece or Croatia, but to adapt their underlying principles to different communities and environmental realities.
The project’s legacy also includes nine original artworks, publications, videos, case studies and other resources documenting both what was created and the processes behind it. The Waterfronts website will remain publicly available as an open resource, allowing the knowledge developed through the project to remain accessible beyond its formal duration.
Empowering Dancers in Motion: from the coast to Zagreb
August also brought the coastal phase of Empowering Dancers in Motion to a close. The six-month training and creation program within dancEUA - Contemporary Resilience continued in Zadar through workshops, artistic encounters, public presentations and connections with existing festival platforms.
One of the highlights was a collaboration with Monoplay, Zadar’s festival dedicated to the solo dance format. Six participants of Empowering Dancers in Motion were included in the festival program: Daria Cristea, Julia Tytska, Lea Amneby Snickars, Nikita Sulko, Valeria Churai and Valeria Lysenkovska.
Importantly, the six solos were not created within dancEUA. They were the dancers’ own artistic works, which they had an opportunity to rehearse, refine and prepare further during their participation in Empowering Dancers in Motion. Their inclusion in Monoplay nevertheless created an important professional opportunity: bringing work developed independently by the young artists into an established festival context and in front of new audiences and dance professionals.
Another highlight of August was an intensive workshop with Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi, centred on the flag as both a physical object and a powerful visual and symbolic element. The working process concluded with a public presentation, opening another part of the participants’ training to audiences and connecting studio research with a live performance context.
At the end of August, the group relocated from the Croatian coast to Zagreb, entering the final stage of the program. The participants now train daily alongside Studio Contemporary Dance Company, while simultaneously moving into the final creation period of Calima, the new performance choreographed by Anna Borràs. The work has been developing throughout Empowering Dancers in Motion and will premiere in Zagreb on 30 September 2026 in Zagreb Dance Center, before continuing into the international touring phase of the project.
Palace of Presence premieres in Zadar
Alongside these international project activities, August was dedicated to the creation of Palace of Presence, a new dance work produced by the artistic organisation ON/A.
Throughout the month, choreographer Milan Tomášik worked with performers Ida Jolić and Marin Lemić on a performance developed in dialogue with the architecture and atmosphere of Zadar’s Kneževa palača.
Inspired by the poetry of Slavko Govorčin from the island of Iž, the work draws on images of stone, wind and sea, translating them into a choreographic dialogue between two bodies and the space surrounding them.
Following the August creation process, Palace of Presence premiered on 25 August in Zadar, bringing a new work to the stage that connects contemporary dance with local poetry, architecture and the wider island landscape of the Zadar region.
