Biennale Danza 2016

For its tenth edition, the International Festival of Contemporary Dance of the Biennale di Venezia (17 > 26 June) is structured to integrate the presentation of productions by great performers and companies with the workshops for creation of the Biennale College – Dance: “The backbone of the Festival – writes director Virgilio Sieni – is represented by the participation of choreographers who will present their work with their own companies and at the same time, in residencies, will work on the development of new pieces within the workshops of the Biennale College”.

From June 17th to 26th Venice will host 25 dancers and choreographers from the contemporary scene, authors of 32 titles, 9 of which will be world premiere performances and 9 will be Italian premiereperformances. The shows will wind cyclically through the city (from late morning to evening), constructing routes or “maps” between the spaces of the Biennale in the Arsenale (Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, Sale d’Armi, Teatro alle Tese, Tese dei Soppalchi) and both outdoor and indoor spaces disseminated across the sestieri of San Marco, Dorsoduro, Castello and even the Island of San Giorgio.

The 10th Festival will present founding figures of contemporary dance such as Maguy Martin, recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement 2016, with the poetic Duo d’Eden, and Trisha Brown with Planes, Opal Loop, Locos, For M.G.: The Movie, works that illustrate the artistic evolution of the American choreographer from the 1960s to the 1990s. With them will be the important radical choreographers of the next generation: Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, author of Vortex Temporum, the culmination of her work based on music, which in this case is the masterpiece of the same name by Gérard Grisey, performed live by the Ictus Ensemble; Shobana Jeyasingh, the pioneer of multiculturalism in dance, who will bring Outlander to the Festival, a special event developed and inspired by the dialogue between art and architecture, in the Palladian Refectory of the Fondazione Cini; Adriana Borriello, who will present the second movement of the cycle Col corpo capisco, founded, like all of her research, on an anthropological vision of the body; Thomas Hauert and his Zoo company with Inaudible, which plays on the different concept of interpretation in music and choreography.

Other choreographers invited to the Festival, most of them recently-acclaimed forty year-olds, include: Nacera Belaza, whose French-Algerian origins underpin her research across two cultures in productions such as Sur le fil and La traversée; German choreographer Isabelle Schad working with French-born artist Laurent Goldring, authors of an original experience at the crossroads between dance, performance and visual art, of which Der Bau, inspired by Kafka’s unfinished posthumous short story by the same name, is an example; Marina Giovannini, who will present Duetto nero, yet another step forward in her personal research into the technique and natural quality of gesture; and Emanuel Gat, the exponent of new Israeli dance but equally renowned in Europe, who will bring to the Biennale the world premiere performance of Sunny, inspired by the music, performed live, of Awir Leon.

The Festival will also spotlight a significant group of thirty-year olds who have cultivated their artistic experiences in various countries in Europe: Swiss dancer Yasmine Hugonnet, who studied classical and modern dance in Paris and Lausanne, where she is currently in residence (Sévelin Theatre), and whose dance is composed of subtle resonances between bodies, will present La ronde in Venice; Italian dancer Annamaria Ajmone, who stunned the audiences of the Biennale last year with her solo in the boatyards of San Trovaso, will be at the Festival with Tiny Extended, influenced by the relationship between images in movement and dance; Gabriel Schenker, born in Washington, raised in Rio and a resident of Brussels for the past eleven years, where he acquired experience with Thomas Hauert/Zoo and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker/Rosas, will be in Venice with the solo Pulse Constellations built on the stratified network of rhythms in the score by John McGuire; Catalan dancer Albert Quesada, based in Brussels and like Schenker a member of the Thomas Hauert/Zoo company, will be at the Biennale to present the eternal magic of flamenco, exploring its symbiosis of dance and music in OneTwoThreeOneTwo; New-Yorker Daniel Linehan, associated with deSingel in Antwerp then with Sadler’s Wells in London and currently at the Opéra de Lille, is interested in the interaction between dance and the other arts – music, video, writing, songs, images – as seen the performance he will bring to Venice, dbdbb; Francesca Foscarini, winner of the Premio Positano 2015 in the contemporary section, who worked with Sciarroni before beginning her own research process, will bring her piece Back Pack to Venice; Lara Russo, who studied dance and photography in Barcelona and in Berlin before settling down in Bologna and winning the 2013 Giovane danza d’autore award for Allumin-io, a study on matter and on man that continues in Ra-me; Daniele Ninarello, who studied at the Academy in Rotterdam, and works between Italy and the countries of Northern Europe, with Bruno Listopad, Felix Ruckert, Virgilio Sieni, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, will be in Venice with saxophonist Dan Kinzelman for a parallel experience of sound and movement, Kudoku; finally twenty-nine year-old Camilla Monga, who studied dance (Scuola Paolo Grassi) and art (Accademia di Brera), before participating in a research process with P.A.R.T.S. that bred the Quartetto per oggetti, inspired by the polyrhythmics of Varèse’s masterpiece Ionisation, which she has expanded for the Festival into 13 Objects.

The Biennale College – Dance thrives on the international context of the Festival, within which it will present 13 short performances, interpreted by 100 young dancers selected through an international call. The performances are developed in the educational workshops of the College: each workshop, lasting one to two weeks, consists in morning classes in contemporary technique (with Laura Aris, Albert Quesada, Milena Twiehaus, Sandy Williams, Ty Boomershine, Sanna Myllylahtie) and a creative phase with the chosen choreographer in the afternoon.

Leading the workshops and creating the choreographies with the dancers of the Biennale College – Dance will be choreographers who will also, for the most part, be participating in the Festival: Emanuel Gat (Venice), Yasmine Hugonnet (Unfolding Figures), Thomas Hauert (Tools for Dance Improvisations), Adriana Borriello (La conoscenza della non conoscenza), Nacera Belaza (La procession), Isabelle Schad and Laurent Goldring (Collective Jumps), Annamaria Ajmone (Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads in Them), Claudia Castellucci (Verso la specie), Elisabetta Consonni (Abbastanza spazio per la più tenera delle attenzioni), Olivia Grandville and Magali Caillet-Gajan (Levée des conflits by Boris Charmatz), Sandy Williams (My Walking is my Dancing), and Virgilio Sieni (Danze sulla debolezza). Some of the workshops with the relative choreographic creations are open, follwoing a practice understood as transmission that is important to Sieni and to much of European choreography, to non-professionals, and will involve an entire community of adolescents, seniors and citizens.

For the fourth year in a row, the programme will feature Vita Nova, a cycle of dances for younger dancers between the ages of 10 and 16, who will work on the languages of contemporary dance. The authors of the choreographic works for Vita Nova are: Marina Giovannini, Manfredi Perego, Chelo Zoppi.

Finally, a workshop for young critics, led by Massimo Marino and Lorenzo Donati, will create a multimedia blog that will record the activities and life behind the scenes at the Biennale Danza 2016.

The Festival will also feature the presentation of the European project Ergonomica. Connecting dance and architecture in urban areas, dedicated to the relationship between dance and architecture, understood as an “instrument of urban regeneration”.

The entities and institutions that have collaborated in this edition of the Dance Biennale include: the Fondazione Giorgio Cini through the Istituto Interculturale di Studi Musicali Comparati, which commissioned Shobana Jeyasingh to create the special event of the Festival, Outlander; AMAT - Associazione Marchigiana Attività Teatrali, the Fondazione Teatro Goldoni Livorno and the Accademia sull'Arte del gesto/Firenze which was responsible for the Vita Nova section; Pro Helvetia – Fondazione svizzera per la cultura which supports the work of Thomas Hauert; Palazzo Grassi – Punta della Dogana which, for the third year, has granted the use of the spaces of the Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi for several performances; as well as the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello of Venice, the Polo Museale Regionale del Veneto, the CTR – Centro Teatrale di Ricerca.