Administrative blunder costs DancEuropa

It might seem like a minor technicality, but for the Suzanne Dellal Center, their failure to fill out the first page of the bundle of forms they got from the European Commission will cost them heavily.

By HELEN KAYE
It might seem like a minor technicality, but for the Suzanne Dellal Center, their failure to fill out the first page of the bundle of forms they got from the European Commission will cost them heavily. The omission "is threatening DancEuropa (DE) next fall," says Suzanne Dellal head Yair Vardi unhappily. "I admit it. The fault is ours. We didn't fill in that very important page that requires us to describe the project in general terms, and if we don't do that, they don't even look at the rest. "On the one hand, the problem is ours, but on the other, [DancEuropa] is a long-term successful collaboration, and it's a shame that it's bureaucracy that torpedoes it." DancEuropa is a celebration in Israel of state-of-the-art dance from leading European dance companies. It's a chance for locals to see what's happening in the dance world outside Israel. One of many Vardi-initiated projects, DancEuropa has been going eight years and has been receiving some 30,000 euro from the European Union, about NIS 165,000 out of an NIS 950,000 total budget. "Last year an EU commission supervisor came to audit the project and recommended that DancEuropa not only continue, but also get more funds," says Vardi even more despondently. EU Commission spokesperson David Kriss is very sympathetic, but says firmly that there is nothing to be done. "Vardi's wasn't the only group that didn't send in the form, and all who didn't were automatically rejected on administrative grounds. We have very strict rules regarding administrative eligibility and regretfully, Suzanne Dellal didn't comply." Kriss said that it was the first time that this particular form had been sent around, but that everybody had not only received instructions on how to fill it out, but also a checklist that included the form. "We do regret our non-support this year," Kriss summed up, "but we feel that the festival has today become so prominent that it will continue [even] without us."