Program
living in the world – transmission and practices
Director Virgilio Sieni
Venice, 28 29 30 June 2013
with the support of the Regione del Veneto
Director Virgilio Sieni
Venice, 28 29 30 June 2013
with the support of the Regione del Veneto
Living in the world is the title of the three-year project of the new artistic director of the Dance Biennale, Virgilio Sieni. A project that relates to the sense of transmission, and in which dance is at the centre of an intensive dialogue with the issues of the contemporary world.
The first stage, Biennale College - Dance 2013, responds to the new strategic line of la Biennale di Venezia that will influence all its disciplines, and that is aimed at searching out and training young artists, who are accompanied on a path that leads from the conception to the realization of a project alongside international renowned masters.
For the Dance Sector, Biennale College has selected more than 100 young dancers and choreographers from Italy, Switzerland, Slovakia, Greece, Poland, Turkey, United States and China. The activity takes place this year from May to June through seven different practices, intended as training moments in the contemporary dance language that will result in a series of events and shows - including meetings, performances and videos -in the last three days of June (28, 29 and 30). Three consecutive days which will see, from morning till night, in two different areas of Venice - San Marco and the Arsenale - the public presentation of 26 new short choreographies, the result of the different training and creation programs of the Biennale College - Dance.
Michele Di Stefano, Alessandro Sciarroni, Arkadi Zaides, Thomas Lebrun, Frank Micheletti, Itamar Serussi Sahar, Ambra Senatore, Iris Erez, Nora Chipaumire, Eleanor Bauer, Simona Bertozzi, Cristina Rizzo, Renate Graziadei, David Hernandez are the masters who will accompany the young choreographers and dancers throughout their creations for the Biennale College - Dance.
At the same time, there will be three public lectures given by David Le Breton, known for his publications in the sociological field, including the successful Il mondo a piedi Marco Aime, anthropologist, author of L’altro e l’altrove, which investigates anthropology, geography and tourism, and Marco Martella, a historian of gardens, and founder of French magazine "Jardins", dedicated to the philosophy and poetics of gardens.
Finally, two important visual documents conserved by ASAC (the Historical Archive of the Contemporary Arts of la Biennale di Venezia) and restored for the occasion will be available again for viewing at the Laboratory of Arts at Ca' Giustinian, to witness the history and strength of the programming of la Biennale of Venice over the years. It includes a performance by Steve Paxton - one of the founders of contact improvisation - with his usual partner Lisa Nelson (1979), and Antigone by the Living Theatre (1970): two expressions of New York counter-culture of the 60s and 70s, made up of radical experimentation, freedom of bodies, and involvement of the audience. The restored videos are supplemented by an unprecedented interview, curated by Paola Nicita and Giovanbattista Tusa, with Jean-Luc Nancy, on the importance of dance in the current philosophical debate.
Walking, the simplest form of movement, observing the surrounding space and meeting the other are at the heart of the Living in the World program. The new creations of the choreographers, performers, and the young dancers invited will find their setting in the city itself, they will measure themselves against the space and natural light of these places. The areas of San Marco and the Arsenale - from Ca' Giustinian, headquarters of La Biennale, to the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello, at the Teatro La Fenice, and the Campi S. Maurizio, Pisani, S. Stefano, S. Angelo, Campiello Novo; from the Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, to Teatro alle Tese, the Tese dei Soppalchi, the Gaggiandre, Viale Garibaldi, the Giardini - will be crossed by the creations of Biennale College - Dance. Each area, with its campi, courtyards and cloisters, palace halls, theatres and arsenals, will become an articulated system of places, set in relation to the creation process, but also crossed by the public in a journey that leads from the intimacy of closed spaces to the pluralistic nature of open ones and vice versa.
The 7 practices from which the creations will arise, that will enliven the last three days of June, have been conceived by Virgilio Sieni as chapters of a unitary journey, and are: Prima Danza, Invenzioni, Agorà, Trasmissioni, Vita Nova, Visitazioni, Atleta Donna (First dance, Inventions, Agora, Transmission, Vita Nova, Visitations, Female Athlete).
Prima Danza focuses on the origins and process of a choreography and develops 6 new choreographic projects selected from among the proposals submitted to us by young choreographers and performers, with their own group as well. The course is already in its first stage, which runs from May 2 to 15, followed by a second stage from 17 to 30 June. The choreographic projects selected are those of Lorena Dozio, Stefania Rossetti, Sara Dal Corso, Caterina Basso, Elisa Romagnani and Tiziana Passoni.
In the practice entitled Invenzioni, the 30 young dancers selected have each chosen to work with a choreographer: Michele Di Stefano, Alessandro Sciarroni, both exponents of the European anti-choreography, or Arkadi Zaides, a former dancer of the Batsheva Dance Company. The work of the dancers and the choreographer will grow into contact with the space specifically sought out for them (the Gallery of the Teatro La Fenice, the Rehearsal room of the Conservatory, Tese dei Soppalchi), indoor spaces that imply intimacy, privacy, proximity with the public. The three short new choreographies will be born from the constant dialogue between the creation, the anthropology of the place, and the openness to other artistic fields.
Each final event is completed with the presentation by each choreographer of one of their own works, reformulated however for Venice, again inquiring about the nature of places. Michele Di Stefano with Mk will present Impressions d'Afrique, where the unreal Africa foreshadowed by Raymond Roussel in the homonymous text is actually a new piece of research on movement, dynamics and body posture. Arkadi Zaides, attentive to the conflict between cultures in the Middle East, offers Inversions of response, a creation made with the visual materials of “Armed with Camera”, a project of the Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, which made known to Israel and to the world the painful everyday life of Palestinian citizens. Alessandro Sciarroni, instead offers Untitled_death in venice version, a first site-specific study of his work on juggling, the art of deftly manipulating objects. "The idea", says Sciarroni, "is to overcome the stereotypes with which this circus art is commonly associated in the collective imagination and to explore it as practice."
Also for Agorà the 30 selected dancers have chosen to work with a choreographer: the Frenchmen Thomas Lebrun, Director of the national choreographic Center of Tours, Frank Micheletti, a long-time collaborator of Josef Nadj before founding the company Kubilai Khan Investigations, or Virgilio Sieni. Unlike Invenzioni, the four choreographies will be developed in relation to the outdoor places, and thus to the light, sounds and colours present in a natural dimension (Campo Pisani, Campiello Novo, Campo S. Maurizio). In particular, Lebrun's Agorà will include vocal music with the presence of the baritone Benjamin Alunni; Micheletti's work plans for a mobility between campo and courtyards, working also on the surrounding sound, while Sieni's double Agorà – according to a practice dear to him - develops a complex composition over three generations of interpreters: on the one hand, children, dancers, and elderly persons (Agorà All), on the other, a path addressing pairs of mothers and children from the observation of simple and daily gestures of this primary bond (Agorà Mothers and Children).
Transmissione calls 7 young choreographers and performers – Gaia Germanà, Ariadne Mikou, Francesca Beatrice Vista, Helen Cerina, Lara Russo, Elisa Mucchi and Simone Basani – to collaborate with Virgilio Sieni in the compositional and choreographic paths of the two Agorà. A study on how gestures are handed down between generations, or about how a relationship becomes transmission.
Vita Nova is the section dedicated to dancers from 10 to 15 years old. It is a pilot project, creating a network of collaborations between organizations and institutions involved in dance at the regional level. This year there will be the involvement of the regions of Veneto, Tuscany and Puglia. The selected youth will work in their place of origin, and will later present in Venice three works, two overseen by Virgilio Sieni and one by Itamar Serussi Sahar, of the Batsheva Dance Company and now residing in Holland.
Visitazioni will present the result oftwo creative pathways, in two Mediterranean cities, Taranto and Venice, overseen respectively by Virgilio Sieni and Ambra Senatore, among our most active choreographers between Italy and France. Virgilio Sieni will meet with a quartet of women in the area of Ilva in Taranto and Ambra Senatore, a quintet of lace-makers of Burano, keepers of ancient knowledge. Starting from their trades, from their wise gestures, exalted through the slow rhythms of the choreography, these women will recount, "with their face and the form of the adagio, what is beauty" (V. Sieni).
Atleta donna is a test of endurance over time, and a challenge of one's limits. A trial for five performers and choreographers who will dance while remaining for hours within three Plexiglas cases: locked in their dance and forced into a transparent space, they will attempt to reach their limit. They are the Israeli Iris Erez, the African Nora Chipaumire, a native of Zimbabwe but living in New York, the American, but of European training, Eleanor Bauer, and the Italians Simona Bertozzi and Cristina Rizzo, leading figures of Italian contemporary dance.
Over the space of two months the young dancers and choreographers selected to participate in the various training courses will work daily on the techniques of contemporary dance in the morning and directly on the creations in the afternoon. The dance techniques will have as masters the Austrian Renate Graziadei, a long-time member of the troupe of Sasha Walz; the American David Hernandez, a contributor to many projects with Meg Stuart; the Israeli Iris Erez; the Frenchman Thomas Lebrun.
The learning seminars on theory and examination of the themes will involve Sergia Adamo, a Professor of comparative literature, attentive to the representation of the female figure in writing; the poet and essayist Antonella Anedda; the Romance philologist Corrado Bologna, concerned with tradition not only the literary one; the geographer and cartographer of the intangible times of the web Franco Farinelli; the journalist and writer Alessandro Leogrande, the scholar of the composition of the movement and of the concept of presence Enrico Pitozzi. The meetings will be coordinated by Stefano Tomassini, Professor of history of dance at the Ca' Foscari University in Venice and of dramaturgy at USI in Lugano.
