Inside the huge area of the Arsenale, amidst the sixteenth-century architecture and the landscapes of industrial archaeology, stands the space of the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, where the great protagonists of international dance teach the 25 selected young dancers.

 

Marion Ballester will kick off the Arsenale della Danza on Monday January 17 with the first cycle of master classes, which will end on Saturday January 29 with a final demonstration open to the public starring the 25 young dancers. Trained at the Conservatoire Régional de la Rochelle and at the Centre National de Dance Contemporaine, then at the Trisha Brown Studio in New York, Marion Ballester will introduce the dancers to the repertoire of movements by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her historic group Rosas, for which she danced from 1992 to 1998 before founding her own company Aoxoa.

 

The techniques of Locking, Popping and Bboying, the expression of dizzying acrobatics, will be taught by a phenomenon of the American funk and break-dance styles. His name is Storm (January 31 > February 12), the pseudonym that Berlin artist Niels Robitzky won out in the field in the world of street dance in New York, dancing with the members of the Rock Steady Crew in Harlem and winning a string of medals in international competitions before appearing on stages all over the world, including in the Biennale, to which he was invited in 2002.

 

Francesca Harper (14 > 26 February), trained in the schools of the American Ballet, the Joffrey Ballet and Alvin Ailey, for six years principal dancer in many productions of the Ballett Frankfurt, and currently the leader of a group of artists, The Francesca Harper Project, with whom she was invited to the Biennale for the first time in 2008, returns to Venice for the Arsenale della Danza as an expert on the Forsythe method. Which, even more than a specific improvisation technique, consisting in poin point line, room writing, dropping points, re-orienting, fragmenting, shearing, u-ing, o-ing, deochronic, is a precious lesson in freedom from orthodoxy and the profound sense of working in a group within which each one is called upon to express himself and to be his own creator.

 

Contemporary dance, as developed in Latin America and in the tradition of the capoeira, a form of martial art that developed from the combat rituals of African tribes transplanted into colonial Brazil, in which the rhythm of the berimbau and the songs that accompany it are a vital element, is the object of a cycle of master classes – produced in collaboration with the SESC – by Fernando Machado and Plínio Ferreira dos Santos (28 February > 12 March). Born and practiced clandestinely in the streets, this “danced” combat was rediscovered in the 1930’s and soon recognized nationally as one of the most authentic expressions of the spirit of this people. Some sustain that breakdance descends from a re-elaboration of the capoeira techniques. To the Arsenale della Danza, Maestro Plínio Ferreira dos Santos will bring the style known as Angola, the version of the capoeira that is most closely linked to the African tradition and to his own roots.

 

An exceptional presence at the Arsenale della Danza will be Othella Dallas (14 > 19 March), 85 years old –she was born in Memphis in 1925– and a career studded with acknowledgments. Othella Dallas was not just an outstanding performer in the Katherine Dunham Company, the first entirely Afro-American modern dance company, but a jazz singer as well, performing with Sammy Davis Jr., Duke Ellington, Sony Stitt and King Curtis before moving to Europe where she dedicated herself to both her passions, singing in clubs all over the world and opening a jazz dance academy in Basle. Dallas was invited to Venice as an exponent of the Afro-American dance technique named after the woman who pioneered it, Katherine Dunham, the forerunner of what would become multi-culturalism, the first to treat the dance of black culture as an artistic subject integrating elements of classical ballet with elements of Afro-Caribbean rituals. 

 

German dance theatre is the basis for the classes by Kenji Takagi (21 March > 2 April), a leading exponent of this genre and a long-time dancer for Pina Bausch (from 2001 to 2008), where he still often appears as a guest. His technique develops the analytical and expressionist traditions of German choreography, which originated with Rudolf von Laban and Kurt Jooss and are still being studied today at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen. His work with Bausch led to highly dynamic and personal movements, which the public at the Biennale was introduced to last year in his amazing solo from Nefes, the piece created by Pina Bausch in 2003 after an intense stay in Istanbul.

 

The last cycle of master classes (4 April > 10 May) will be led by director Ismael Ivo himself, with the assistance of Franca Pagliassotto and Luca Della Corte. The object of his course is the creative process that will lead to the creation of a new performance involving all the dancers in the Arsenale della Danza, divided into two casts. After The Waste Land, which successfully concluded the first year of activity of the Arsenale Della Danza and Oxygen, at the end of the following year, a new performing experience will confront the dancers with the public stage and will encourage them to become actors in the choreographic process. This entire session of the Arsenale della Danza will focus on training a dancer who is not a simple performer, but can develop his own independence as a writer and his own identity as an artist.

 

The new creation by Ismael Ivo will make its debut on May 11 at the Teatro Malibran, with a repeat performance on the 13, during the week that the Dance sector will dedicate to the performances this year. With the idea of offering future perspectives to the activities of the Arsenale della Danza and its dancers, the performance will then go on tour, taking the Dance Biennale to the major cities of the Veneto for the first time ever, and there may be further possibilities for going abroad in the near future. After its debut in Venice, Ivo’s new creation will be performed on May 17 at the Teatro Verdi in Padua, on May 19 at the Teatro Comunale in Vicenza, May 20 at the Teatro Comunale in Belluno, on May 21 at the Teatro Comunale in Treviso, on May 24 at the Teatro Camploy in Verona, and at a date yet to be defined, at the Teatro Sociale in Rovigo.

 

The dancer’s training at the Arsenale della Danza will also include lessons in basic and in classical academic technique, to be held respectively every morning by Manola Bettio and Viviana Palucci of the Associazione DanzaVenezia; the physical therapist Fabrizio Murtas will lecture twice a week on health and prevention. The theory and history of modern and contemporary dance will be taught by Stefano Tomassini (a lecturer in the History of Dance and Mime at the university of Cà Foscari in Venice and at the Università della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano) and Susanne Franco (lecturer on the History of Dance at the Università degli Studi di Salerno and at the IUAV in Venice); and in collaboration with the SESC, Cássia Navas, a teacher of dance and semiotics at the Art Institute of the State University of Campinas, in the state of São Paolo, will illustrate the key moments and the developments in modern and contemporary dance in Brazil, relating them to tradition and exploring the specific typology acquired on the American continent.