How it all started!

In the summer of 2009, right after our first RAKS summerschool, Khalida and Artemisia went on a little field trip to the Jillina Weekend Djamilla was organising in Offenbach. After an inspiring weekend, and on the long train journey back, we started a brainstorm... that would eventually lead to Raks Pro

What we wanted was to find a way to continue working with some of the great dancers that had participated in our summerschool. To our delight more professional dancers than we had hoped for, had enrolled for RAKS. Afterwards they all expressed how they were finding it harder and harder to find weekly classes that suited not only their level, but also their time shedule. They wanted to work more with us (blush and yeay!) but really couldnt make it to our classes. Could we please do something in the weekends?

So A and K set out to try and come up with something! We love new plans! Our original dream was the PPPP-program. (Prepare, Polish, Pimp, Perform). Over a series of weekends, we would offer solo choreography therapy, for advanced dancers to work on their own solo's...possibly leading up to a show.

(and we still might run that sometime in future)...

BUT

Somewhere in 2009-2010, we decided to go a different route. Artemisia's shows had plenty of solo-ists in it... why not work with a group of professionals to add some interesting group choreographies to the mix. A new challenge for us as choreographers, and a new challenge for the Belgian dance scene! No, not a student troupe of one local dancer, but a group of professionals, from ALL over Belgium, each with their own talents and experience, would join us for this adventure. with choreographies from several pro's, from Belgium and abroad, to assure the necessary diversity such a project needed.

In march 2010 we started emailing around, and assembling both a group of dancers, and a pretty intensive training shedule...

The original plan was to keep this a temporary project... but we changed our minds. Why change a winning team!

More about the process of working towards "An evening with... Bozenka" and turning Raks Pro into something permanent... in a seperate entry later this week!

signing off and off to bed

Artemisia