Artist-led, artist-used: experiences at Coventry's Summer Dancing 2009.

This multi-authored article arises from an artist-led festival of dance and probes what is entailed by the commitment to an artist-led structure. The festival, Summer Dancing 2009 in Coventry, is becoming significant in the United Kingdom as a gathering, both regionally and nationally, of practitioners whose expertise is grounded in what might be termed somatic dance practices. It is proposed that artist-led may indicate an aim to be led by artists for other artists; that is, for an event or organization to be artist-used and useful. With the question of artists' use at the fore, the article reports on a festival panel debate and on a project of practitioner-focused writing, examining how a dance practitioner may be stimulated, challenged or find connections to an existing practice.N/