IOTPD
International Organization for the Transition of Professional Dancers
Associates
Poland
Program Przekwalifikowania Zawodowego Tancerzy - Professional Dancers' Transition Programme
The Professional Dancers’ Transition Programme (Program Przekwalifikowania Zawodowego Tancerzy) was started by the National Institute of Music and Dance in 2015. The Programme is addressed to professional dancers, the performers of artistic dance. All the counselling, training and informational activities are realised free of charge and with a guarantee of confidentiality, regardless of the previous experience in dancing or professional qualifications. The Programme is implemented throughout Poland, but foreign dancers are also welcome. The Programme is fully funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
The Programme offers:
– expert guidance of a career counsellor (individual consultations), regardless of the previous experience in dancing or professional qualifications,
– free access to job market workshops that teach how to find a job you are looking for (application documents, CV, preparing for an interview) and to workshops boosting interpersonal competences,
Psychological workshops for students of public ballet schools
– assistance with drawing up an individual plan of action,
– scholarship to cover the costs of education, as well as complementing and acquiring new qualifications.
As part of the Programme, the dancers are guaranteed support from a team of experts composed of career counsellors and Programme coordinators, who help plan and make decisions pertaining to a new professional career.
The scholarship may be obtained, upon application, by the dancers who are planning to end their stage careers and who have a dozen years’ professional experience or three years’ dancing experience ended due to an injury.
In addition to the Transition Programme, a pilot Professional Dancers’ Development of Non-Dancing Competences Programme [Program Rozwoju Pozatanecznych Kompetencji Zawodowych Tancerzy] was announced in the autumn of 2022, and have been continued in 2023.
The Programme is addressed to the dancers who, during their dancing career or no later than a year after its completion, plan to develop their professional competences and become acquainted with the job market beyond the dance industry. This might be an introduction to their subsequent career transition. The Programme will give them an opportunity to take part in training courses that will help them verify their plans or obtain new skill sets.
The grant can be obtained by the dancer no more than three times during his or her dancing career. When applying for the Competences Development Grant, one needs to prove a dance performance career of at least five years and to have attended at least one meeting with a career counsellor. Obtaining the Competences Development Grants does not preclude the applicant from taking part in the Professional Dancers’ Transition Programme in the future.
More information can be found online at: www.ideedlatanca.pl/en/
The Professional Dancers’ Transition Programme in numbers:
345 dancers participating in the consultations with career counsellors
– 110 scholarships awarded for an individual plan of career transition (64 women and 46 men)
– 24 grants awarded in the Professional Dancers’ Development of Non-Dancing Competences Programme
63 dancers who already completed their transition process
About the team
Monika Kaszewska
Coordinator of the Professional Dancers’ Transition Programme
Dancer with twenty years’ stage experience, teacher, choreographer. Graduate of the Roman Turczynowicz Comprehensive Ballet School in Warsaw and the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw (diploma in ballet pedagogy).
She obtained the title of cultural manager from the Faculty of Management, Warsaw University.
She has worked for the National Institute of Music and Dance since 2015. She is in charge of enquiries, addressing doubts expressed by some dancers, and she coordinates meetings between the dancers and career counsellors.
Anna Čemeljić
Chief specialist in dance education and popularization in National Institute of Music and Dance.
Cultural anthropologist by profession, she dances traditional dances in her free time. In NIMIT she is responsible for Career Transition Programme for Dancers and Traditional Music and Dance Laboratory, coordinating and accounting for the projects. She is helping dancers with preparing applications for scholarship and assisting them with finance advices and accounting of the expenses during the transition process.
Privately organizer one of the biggest Polish and European traditional music and dance festivals: All Mazurkas of the World Festival.
Ewa Salwa
Coordinator of the Professional Dancers’ Development of Non-Dancing Competences Programme
Dancer and teacher. Graduate of the Feliks Parnell Ballet School in Łódź and the Fryderyk Chopin Academy of Music in Warsaw (diploma in ballet pedagogy). She also completed postgraduate studies of physioprophylaxis and correction at the Józef Piłsudski University of Physical Education in Warsaw.
Dobrosława Choryńska-Chudy
Career counsellor
Career counsellor and instructor specialising in career activation and job market. She assists the candidates applying for the Programme with planning of the professional development, career reorientation and the choice of educational path. She advises and analyses the candidates’ predisposedness and professional potential in conducting their own business operations. Licensed instructor of the international programme Spadochron (Parachute) for those planning their careers, changing jobs and seeking jobs. She has more than ten years’ experience of a personal adviser in HR specialising in such areas as development paths and recruitment, and she is as an assessor for the Assessment and Development Centre projects.
In her free time, she is a passionate ballroom and Argentine tango dancer.
Ewa Warchoł
Career counsellor, coach, psychotraumatologist, instructor. Certified consultant of diagnostic tools (MBTI, Insight/DISC, Kompas Kariery), licensed instructor of the international programme Spadochron (Parachute) which prepares candidates to land or change jobs. For many years, she taught career counselling at tertiary institutions in Gdańsk and Warsaw. She possesses practical and theoretical knowledge of the mechanisms governing the job market, also on the basis of her almost twenty-five years’ experience of working in various industries as an expert at staff development and as a recruiter. She is in charge of complex outplacement programmes in collaboration with the international industry leaders. Since 2008, she has specialised with working with people in transition, including those who make educational and career choices. She also works as a psychotherapist. In her free time, she is passionate about music and historical dance. For seventeen years, she danced in amateur historical dance ensembles: Pawanilia in Poland and Pastime in England. She is now pursuing her passion at the Klub Tańca Dawnego (Historical Dance Club) ‘Alta Novella’. She has taken part in dance master classes with such instructors as Barbara Sparti, Lieven Baert, Bruna Gondoni, Dorothée Wortelboer and Jane Gingell.
The information about our program on this general Institute webpage
https://nimit.pl/dzialalnosc/program-przekwalifikowania-zawodowego-tancerzy/
Webpage of the Program itself, also in in English: