Please note - we are not asking for donations at this point

(See Dutch tekst here)

For 25 years The Henny Jurriens Studio (HJS) has been an essential part of the professional dance infrastructure of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and Europe. Our subsidy request to Amsterdam Art Fund for 2021-2024 was judged positively with the recommendation that we receive 100% of the amount we asked for! Unfortunately, due to a shortage of funds, it was only partially honored and cut to a level below that of the previous years.

This means we may be forced to stop our activities in 2021.

What will disappear?
HJS organizes more than 750 activities per year which benefit thousands of professional dancers, teachers and musicians. HJS offers professional training, workshops, and masterclasses in a wide variety of styles and areas within and related to the ballet, contemporary dance and urban genres. In addition, we arrange performance opportunities for dancers and choreographers, workshops for school children and much more. We have a modest subsidy from Amsterdam and a small overhead, but we play a grand role in the professional dance community!

HJS is the only institution of its kind in the Netherlands.

• Professional dance artists from more than 45 countries and often working in Holland train at the studio. For them training is not a hobby but an essential activity needed daily to keep them in shape for theatre performances.
• HJS is source of employment for more than 50 dance teachers and many dancers every year.
• Choreographers scouting for dancers drop by, or regularly teach or rehearse in the studios.
• The studio serves as a networking and information center, essential for the sector.

The subsidy we have (35% of our total revenues, the other 65% we earn from tuition fees) is used to keep the prices affordable for professional dancers and it also allows us to bring internationally known teachers and choreographers to Amsterdam. With the subsidy HJS makes the city an international cultural destination – an important priority according to the city’s cultural policy.

Without the full subsidy we will have to stop our activities.

If HJS stops it will have a direct effect on the quality of dancers and performances in Amsterdam and the rest of the country, and the international reputation of the city as a cultural magnet, especially for the dance field, will be lessened.

With this petition we ask the Amsterdam City government to find a way so that HJS can receive the full amount of the subsidy request, which has been approved by AFK Amsterdam, but because of lack of sufficient funds, cannot not be paid to us.

Please help ensure that HJS doesn’t close down but continues to support the dance community by signing this petition.
(please note, we are not asking you to donate at this point)

Ted Brandsen, Director Dutch National Ballet, says this about HJS:
For the past 25 years, the Henny Jurriëns Studio has played a vital part in the development of the contemporary and independent dance world in Amsterdam and far beyond. It is an important center for dance training, a meeting place and platform for learning and exchange for dancers, choreographers, teachers and dance artists of all sorts, and a crucial hub for dance in Europe.

Offering the broadest spectrum of professional dance training imaginable, HJS lives and breathes creativity and the search for excellence and for new ways of communicating with the body, wel­coming dance practitioners from a great variety of backgrounds.

In a city where there are many independent dance makers, but no formal dance house or production center, HJS is the place where different artists from all over the world maintain and develop their artistry, learn from one another and find jobs and performance opportunities, and where dance makers find dancers and inspiration.

Ohad Naharin, House Choreographer of Batsheva Dance Company in Israel and creator of the Gaga movement language says this:
The Henny Jurriens is a unique institution and has been providing excellent opportunities for dancers and choreographers for 25 years. I am writing with great concern for its future, Its loss would be a great blow certainly to The Netherlands but also to the international dance community.