Six cities, twelve performances, three festivals and two theatres. Dance performance „Colourful games“ for children of 0-3 years was presented in Ireland on 6-15 July. Dancer Giedrė Subotinaitė and choreographer Birutė Banevičiūtė met young spectators in Ennis Street Arts Festival, Cairde Sligo Arts Festival, Earagail Arts Festival in Dunfanagy and Letterkenny as well as in Pavilion Theatre in Dun Laoghaire and Garter Lane Theatre in Waterford. This tour was supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture.

After starting 2018 tours in Czech Republic, United States, India and Hong Kong, Dansema has visited Estonia, Ukraine, Poland, China, Singapore and Palestine. This year's Dansema harvest includes performances in 10 countries, 18 cities, 9 international festivals (Festival Solove, IPAY, WeDance, HOOG, Safari Kids Theater Festival, Act3International, KRoki, Prapremier Festival, BIPAF). In total, 59 performances have been shown, which were seen by nearly 4000 spectators. Special visits were in Shanghai and Palestine, where we not only showed performances, but, along with local children, we implemented creative and educational dance projects "Creation of the World". We have shown this performance with 100 students from Shanghai Shangde Experimental School at the Shanghai Children's Art Theater. In Hebron and Jerusalem 40 local children, who had no previous dance experience and live in a tense political situation, participated in the project. This project was organized and supported by the Lithuanian office in Ramallah. Tours in foreign countries were not limited to showing performances. In Estonia, Ukraine, China and Singapore we conducted dance lessons for 8-14 months babies according to the methodology of Dansema artistic director, choreographer, doctor of social sciences Birutė Banevičiūtė, which impressed not only children's parents, but also professionals working with children. As a result, Ukrainian choreographers and dance educators developed the idea of ​​publishing the methodology for the early dance development of B. Banevičiūtė in Ukrainian. This project in Ukraine was very successful and received support from newly established Ukrainian Cultural Foundation. Following the methodology of Birutė, Ukrainian artists presented their first self-created dance performance for children.

Dansema did not forget the small spectators in Lithuania, too. Performances were shown 52 times in Vilnius, Kaunas, Šiauliai, Marijampolė. We attended the International Jėga/ Cool Festival of ASSITEJ Lithuania in Šiauliai. We had dance lessons for babies, with performances we visited Vilnius residence of infants with developmental delays. We have started a new cooperation with Kaunas European Capital of Culture. So we are looking forward for 2019 full of new trips and performances.

Dansema international tours are funded by the Lithuanian Culture Council.

Dansema, the pioneer of dance performances for babies in Lithuania, is finishing its season with one more premiere in Lithuania - performance of musical action "Watchmaker". Usually premiering in the capital, this time Dansema invites everyone to their see their newest piece in Kaunas. The performance for babies 5 to 20 months old was inspired by the sounds of the watch mechanism - arrows, gears and alarm.

Little spectators will be greeted by fun movement and sound surprises popping out of the dancer's costume, created by the artist Medilė Šiaulytytė. Babies will be able to become participants of the performance, co-authors of movement and music, created by composer Jurgita Mieželytė as well as to create a collective musical accompaniment for the performance by exploring musical instruments. This is the first performance of this form for babies in Lithuania, also unique because it is a solo performed by a male dancer. Well known contemporary dance performers Mantas Stabačinskas and Marius Pinigis will take turns in creating musical "Watchmaker" action together with babies.

According to Dansema artistic director and choreographer “Watchmaker” Birutė Banevičiūtė, this performance was started to create in the autumn of last year, with the initiative of Kaunas 2022. The team of the European Capital of Culture was seeking to make Kaunas audience more familiar with performing arts for babies, and, together with Dansema, developed creative movement laboratories for babies and their parents. “During our tours, the tickets in Kaunas get sold out very quickly, so we decided to give Kaunas community the joy of the premiere this time. This will be our first premiere outside of Vilnius” - Dansema's choreographer speaks about traveling to the little spectators. The “Watchmaker” will premiere at Kaunas City Chamber Theater on April 14, 11:00, 15:00 and 17:00. Tickets can be purchased via Tiketa. Sponsors of the performance are Kaunas 2022, Vilnius and Kaunas City Municipalities.

Dance theatre Dansema is getting ready for a tour in China for the fifth time. Choreographer Birutė Banevičiūtė and dancers Giedrė Subotinaitė, Indrė Bacevičiūtė and Mantas Stabačinskas will be visiting Shanghai on 4-20 May.

For five years, Dansema has been collaborating with the Shanghai Children Arts Theater where they will have 16 performances the famous Puzzle this year. Five years ago this particular performance was a starting point for Dansema’s collaboration with China, when in 2014 it became a first company ever to perform for babies in China. Together with the two Shanghai schools, Dansema dancers will also carry out a creative-educational project Creation of the World during which dancers with children without any dance experience will create a dance performance within 3 days. The result of the creative process will be the dance performance, in which the children appear together with the dancers, publicly presented on the stage. The project will involve 160 students from Shanghai Shangde International School, to which Dansema has been invited for the second time and 120 pupils from Changyi Elementary Public School.

Dansema  team will also have baby dance workshops for babies of 8-14 months, based on the method of early dance education, developed by Birutė Banevičiūtė – pedagogue, choreographer and the artistic director of Dansema 

For many years now, summer is not the end of the season and the start of holidays for Dansema, but hard work on world-wide tours. This time the team visited China and South Korea in May, while in July and August they will spend a month in Japan. Even though this kind of summer sounds exotic, dancers say there is no  time to be tourists - the schedule in Asia is packed with over fifty performances and educational activities.

On May 4-20, Dansema visited China. This is already their fifth visit in this country, so dancers are happy to see not only new, but already familiar spectators, who wait for the performances of Dansema every year. Sixteen Puzzle performances for 0-3 year old children were shown at Shanghai Children's Art Theater and five baby dance workshops for 8-14 months were held. The results of the creative-educational dance project “Creation of the World” (choreographer Birutė Banevičiūtė, composer Rasa Dikčienė) with two Shanghai schools were also presented there. During the project more than 130 primary school students without prior dance experience after three days of creative laboratories danced on a professional theater stage together with Dansema dancers Giedre Subotinaite, Indre Bacevičiūtė, Mantas Stabačinskas. This is the third time this kind of project is done in Shanghai and it seems to be very successful, as more and more schools are willing to participate. Shanghai Children's Art Theater director Liang Xiao Xia and project manager Zhao Yajing, celebrating the high artistic value of Dansema's performances and creative activities, are pleased with the long-term cooperation with Dansema and are already making new plans for the future.

Right after the tour in China, Dansema traveled on tour to South Korea, organized thanks to new contacts from PAMS (Performing Arts Market in Seoul) which was visited by Dansema international tour producer Gintare Masteikaitė. Having appeared in five cities in the country, Dansema has become the first Lithuanian company to bring dance performances for children in South Korea. In the Ansan-Art Center, Seongnam Art Center, Hwasung Art Hall and Jeju Arts Center, nine performances of Puzzle were shown, and two baby dance workshops were held in Seoul, followed by seminars for dancers, choreographers and dance educators  on a methodology for early dance education and performance for babies, developed by Birutė Banevičiūtė, the artistic director of Dansema. For the well-known South Korean dance producer Jang Kwangryul, who organized the tour, dance performances for babies seemed as a challenge at first, as there were no such performances in their country. However, after receiving a number of excellent reviews from the audience, as well as from the local dance professionals and theater critics, Dansema has received invitations to return and continue to collaborate. Dansema dancers Indrė Bacevičiūtė, Mantas Stabačinskas and Marius Pinigis not only danced for children in South Korea, but also improvised at the Jeju International Dance Forum and Jeju International Improvisation Dance Festival together with local musicians at Jeju Sculpture Park and Light Festival Light Art Flash.

Dansema dancers will be packing their suitcases again soon - the Asian tour financed by the Lithuanian Culture Council will end with a month in Japan. From 17^thof July till 15^thof August Dansema will perform "Puzzle" for children of 0-3 years in five cities in Japan. Twenty performances are planned in Fukuoka, Kawasaki, Shizuoka, Kyoto and Okinawa. This tour in Japan was initiated by the organizers of the International Children's Theaters Festival Ricca Ricca Festa after Dansema participated in this festival in 2017.

After spending the summer on tours from Ireland and Poland to China, Korea and Japan, Dansema Dance Theater is launching a new season with a special project funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, Vilnius and Kaunas City Municipalities and Culture Bridges and i-Portunus - double interpretation of a single performance. The Lithuanian version of the performance The Clockmaker and the Ukrainian version “TikTak” will presented on October 5 at the Arts Printing House. The Clockmaker was born in Kaunas in cooperation with Kaunas2022 and was first shown at the Kaunas City Chamber Theater in April. It's a new form of performance for babies, a musical action performance based on the idea of moving objects that make sounds, much like the various parts of a watch - arrows, bell, gears. Choreographer Birutė Banevičiūtė, dancers Mantas Stabačinskas and Marius Pinigis, composer Jurgita Mieželytė, artist Medilė Šiaulytytė and light artist Aurelijus Davidavičius participated in the creation of the Lithuanian version. Dansema artistic director Birutė Banevičiūtė is currently developing a TikTak version with local artists - actresses Iryna Zapolska and Tetiana Bielousova, as well as composer and musician Mykhailo Syromlia. The performance is language free so it will be well understood by the children audience of Lithuania. On October 6, TikTak will be shown at Kaunas Culture Center.

The 12th season of Dansema will continue in the usual rhythm - the project “Dissemination of Contemporary Dance Performances for Children in Lithuania” sponsored by the Lithuanian Council for Culture will show the popular performances of babies Colourful Games, Meadow, Puzzle and Twinkles in Kaunas, Panevėžys and other Lithuanian cities. In 2020, the theater is planning another premiere - a dance project for babies by choreographer Birutė Banevičiūtė and former dance theater Aura dancer currently living and working in Germany, Raimonda Gudavičiūtė-Haun. In February, Birutė Banevičiūtė together with Kaunas Puppet Theaterswill also present a mutual project - an interactive puppet performance for babies.

The new season would not be complete without tours abroad - Dansema will be performing in Poland, Denmark, Estonia and the United Arab Emirates. The tour to Dubai, the capital of the latter country, are special – despite the fact that it is an extremely rich country, Dansema will be the first in this country to show dance performances for a baby audience.

More information on Dansema's performances, repertoire and tours can be found at www.dansema.lt.

The year of 2019 reaffirmed the worldwide demand for Dansema dance theater performances for children: significant tours abroad, repeated invitations to festivals and to countries that were not visited before, visits to Lithuanian towns, and fresh premieres for babies.

Dance Performances for babies of Lithuania and the World

As a part of the Lithuanian Culture Council-funded project "Dance Spreads for Babies Abroad", Dansema visited 10 countries this year, with  performances for young audiences up to 3 years “Twinkles”, “Puzzle” “Colourful Games” and “Meadow” shown 76 times in total. 9 international festivals were visited during the international tour - Clonmel Junction Arts Festival, Cairde Sligo Arts Festival and Earagail Arts Festival in Ireland, Ricca Ricca Festa in Japan, Pozytyvka, Prapremier and Take Part in Art in Poland, NAKS festival in Estonia, Dans Baby Dans in Denmark.

“We are extremely excited about the new destinanions in our tours, which are results of consistent long-term and distribution of our performances abroad. It is Korea, United Arab Emirates, Denmark. We have been to other countries we visited this year, so it is great that we are invited to come back and show our performances in Ireland, Estonia, Poland, Ukraine, China and Japan ” - says Birutė Banevičiūtė, artistic director and choreographer of Dansema.

In many of the tour countries, Dansema has not only shown performances, but has also hosted baby dance classes and workshops for dance professionals interested and eager to start performing for children. During the lectures and meetings, Birute Banevičiūtė, Dansema choreographer and a doctor of social sciences, introduced the methodology of the creative dance experience at an early age, which is successfully applied not only in Lithuania but also in foreign countries.

Dansema did not forget the Lithuanian audience. 72 performances were shown this year in 17 Lithuanian towns as part of another project funded by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, Dissemination of Contemporary Dance Performances for Children in Lithuania. In addition to the major cities of the country, Dansema performances for babies were shown in  smaller towns around Vilnius, Kaunas and Panevėžys, as well as Biržai, Jonava, Kelmė, Alytus, Kretinga and Mažeikiai.

At the end of the year, a unique project was carried out in Jonava, in cooperation with the Center for Comprehensive Education of Children and Youth. The residents of Jonava retirement home became spectators of the performance "Colourful Games", which is originally for babies. So the performance was watched by a joint audience of seniors who are 80 and under, and babies up to 3 years of age. According to older viewers, this performance and being together with the children in one artistic space provided unforgettable excitment and made it possible to remember their childhood.

Results of New International Cooperation

This year, two premieres of Dansema have been presented – performances new in their form "Meadow" and "The Watchmaker". "Meadow" is a performance-installation for babies up to 18 months old, where they can explore dance and the environment without limiting the time needed for the little ones to get involved. The special nature of this performance caught the attention of foreign festival producers right after the premiere in February. Dansema was invited to two international children's theater festivals in Poland and Estonia in the fall.

The Watchmaker is a musical action performance based on the idea of moving objects that emit sounds, much like the various parts of the watch – arrows, bell, gears. The performance is special because two versions of it were created – Lithuanian and Ukrainian. The initiative of the project originated from cooperation with Kaunas - European Capital of Culture 2022 programme, therefore the performance was created with the help of young future spectators of Kaunas city and district. This project was also supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture, Vilnius and Kaunas city municipalities. After the premiere in Lithuania, another version of this performance was shown in Ukraine, together with local artists Iryna Zapolska and Tetiana Bielousova, as well as composer and musician Mykhailo Syromlia. This performance has complemented not only the range of Lithuanian theater performances for children, but also significantly contributed to the development of a culture of performances for babies in Ukraine.

2020 was full of challenges for Dansema - we postponed planned tours in eight countries, the premiere of a new performance for babies "Forest" took place in March only at the Gallus Theater in Frankfurt, but could not be presented for Lithuanian young audiences. However, this year also brought new ideas and projects, which were generously supported by the Lithuanian Council for Culture. One of them is an interactive dance performance-research for children with visual impairments "World without Eyes". This is a special dance event in which from the very beginning we have involved families raising children with visual impairments. Thanks to them, we have developed a special methodology for experiencing and perceiving dance, which allows blind and partially sighted children to understand dance. The success of the process of creating this performance was ensured by the competent team of Dansema creators: the author of the idea and choreographer Birutė Banevičiūtė, dancers Giedrė Subotinaitė and Mantas Stabačinskas, set and costume designer Medile Šiaulytytė, composer Valerio Camporini Faggioni. The whole creative research process was captured by video operator Vilius Vaitiekūnas and photographer Laura Vansevičienė.