Paolo Baratta

The three Departments of Dance, Music, Theatre will continue their commitment to multi-year programmes.
This commitment is in fact three-fold:

-  the festival understood as place of encounter and understanding of artistic productions;
-  the festival as a centre of research around predefined themes;
- the college as a place for the original promotion of new talents and artists.

In this direction, year after year, La Biennale has progressively confirmed its course of action in all three departments, and this stability has established its modus operandi as a signature trait.
Operating in this manner, we have tried to optimize available resources, in order to achieve more lasting results. The three-year programmes have clearly helped to serve this end.

And we are grateful to the three directors for their systematic efforts, the constancy of their commitment, the quality of the outcome.

For the year 2019, the programmes in each sector will again highlight a focus, a title, something that will serve as a spark to ignite the eye and the mind.

Dance presents the figure of the dancer as its starting point, to explore the phenomenon of his transfiguration into an artist of the body, of space, of time.
With various degrees of emphasis, all three address a common research theme. The relationship with the audience and the theme of its involvement.
It is interesting to note that in addressing this relationship, they introduce interesting cross-sectoral elements, and this is true not only diagrammatically (mixed forms) but in reference to something more basic, which all the sectors share, and that is how they elicit in the audience an openness to perception and to dialogue, and hence to the problematic channels of communication – to foster participation between the artists and the audience. That audience is considered to be the protagonist of its own metamorphosis which takes place in front of the stage: from audience, to observer, to participating subject. A process of evolution shared by the spectator of theatre, the listener of music, the observer of movement, the visitor to an exhibition, and that in the final analysis leads us back to the vitality of the artwork.

The Colleges have kept their promise.
This year’s Dance festival features a young choreographer who emerged from the College Dance – Choreographers last year, and will present an original work; the College – Choreographers this year will develop, over the course of six weeks, the works of three new young choreographers, who will be given the opportunity to work with 7 professional dancers. Also returning is the College Dance – Dancers (almost 100 applications for a selection of 15 participants), who will work for three months and bring the results of their work to the festival.

Last year we experimented with a new college, coordinated by our Archives (ASAC), in collaboration with the five operative departments in 2018 (in addition to Dance, Music, Theatre, also Architecture and Cinema): this is the College "Writing in residence", with which we offer a tutorship to three young graduates for each department. They will be given access to the historic archives and the festivals or exhibitions, with the goal of writing about a selected theme over the course of a trimester.
The tutors last year were: Elisa Guzzo Vaccarino, Federico Bellini, Cesare Fertonani, Luca Molinari, and Nicola La Gioia.
We will continue in 2019. Writing about art needs to be promoted. We also want to offer a stimulus and an opportunity to work with highly-qualified support. This is a commitment that seeks an even greater engagement of young people in our activities and with our legacy of information. We will repeat the experience this year in an effort to make this become a "space" for research.

The Music Department of the Biennale was founded in 1930, the Theatre Department in 1932. Dance was officially introduced as an independent department in 1998 and hence made its debut in 1999, exactly twenty years ago. I mention this with great pleasure and satisfaction, and so as I thank everyone from the bottom of my heart, I invite you to celebrate this anniversary with us.