Catalan artist Maria Campos and Guy Nader from Lebanon, who since 2006 have formed an independent company based in Barcelona, explore time with three other dancers in Time Takes the Time Time Takes, through the repetition and accumulation of movement, swaying movements that create complex mechanisms in time with the pulsing of Miguel Marin’s live music by, a hypnotic representation of perpetual motion.
A trailblazer for a new generation of choreographers, Noé Soulier has embraced all of western dance in his well-rounded training, which he completed between Paris, Toronto and Brussels, while also earning a degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne, and writing essays. He has been appointed to be the Director of the CDNC in Angers starting in July. At the Biennale, Soulier will present two works that scrutinize the gesture and memory of the body: The Waves, with two percussionists from the Ictus Ensemble, and Portrait of Frédéric Tavernini, with Soulier himself performing Fargion’s music on the piano. Inscribing his choreography into a conceptual context – as the heir to a generation of artists such as Jérôme Bel, Xavier Leroy, Tino Seghal – his works strive for both harmony and beauty.
The pursuit of the alchemy between dance and music, and the reciprocal conversation between body and sound, inspires the work of Belgian choreographer Lisbeth Gruwez, who hails from the artistic laboratory of Jan Fabre following her classical training: in Venice she will share the stage with pianist Claire Chevallier for Piano Works Debussy, a dance that paints the immaterial music of Debussy like a watercolour, and will dialogue with Bob Dylan’s songs from the ‘60s and ‘70s, to a live vinyl mix by Maarten Van Cauwenberghe, in Lisbeth Gruwez dances Bob Dylan.
Basque choreographer Jone San Martín, in Legitimo/Rezo, will set into dance the personal “diary of notes” on her more than twenty-year career with William Forsythe, co-author of this solo/lecture which has toured the world. It is an inside look at the creative process that Forsythe develops with his dancers, a reflection upon the body as an archive of gesture with the dancer who is considered to be “Forsythe’s living archive”.
From Micha Van Hoecke to Constanza Macras, from Yasmeen Godder and Ohad Naharin to Sasha Waltz and Italian choreographers Virgilio Sieni and Ambra Senatore, Claudia Catarzi’s experience is vast and continues beside important names even when, since 2011, she turns to personal creation, conceiving solo pieces that have won awards everywhere. Currently an associated artist at the CDCN in Bordeaux, Claudia Catarzi will present Posare il tempo at the Biennale, a study for duo on movement in relation to the essential dimensions of space-time, the time that works towards the modification and evolution of things and the space that generates connections.
Matteo Carvone, who has worked with important choreographers such as William Forsythe, Emmanuel Gat and Wayne McGregor, and who has been a freelance choreographer since 2009, primarily in Northern Europe, revisits and “cages” the mythological figure of the faun: an archetype of modern ballet since Nijinsky, it has been a challenge for choreographers such as Lifar, Robbins, Amodio, Petit, Kyliàn, Béjart, Neumeier and Chouinard herself, who presented a provocative female version of the myth. Anchored to our contemporary era, Carvone proposes a male duo on artificial grass, nature lost forever to the self-destructive fury of man.
In a brilliant show of irony inspired by the most famous of neo-Classical statues, the Three Graces by Antonio Canova – the quintessence of balance, harmony and universal beauty –Silvia Gribaudi’s Graces puts three dancers on stage before she herself bursts out to join them. Against all convention, stereotype and automatisms, her dance flits lightly in an apotheosis of the liberating power of imperfection. Winner of the Danza&Danza 2019 award, the piece is a play on social codes such as those of dance.
Considered the manifesto-piece of her research into the political body, Gentle Unicorn by and with Chiara Bersani, an artist who works in the fields of performance and visual arts, won her an Ubu as Best actress and performer under-35 last season. To the unicorn, the mythological figure of unknown origin which has changed form and meaning over the centuries, “a creature with no homeland and no history, used and abused by humans, deprived of the right to free speech”, Chiara Bersani consecrates her own body – flesh, muscles and bone, eyes and breath – to compensate for the injustices it has suffered. To give it a story, love, choice.
Marco D’Agostin, who has performed for Claudia Castellucci, Alessandro Sciarroni and Iris Erez, began his career as a choreographer in 2010 and since then has presented his works in Italy, France, Great Britain, Spain and Belgium, winning the 2018 Ubu award as Best performer Under-35. He was one of the founders of VAN in 2013 along with 8 other artists (Francesca Foscarini, Andrea Costanzo Martini, Camilla Monga, Giorgia Ohanesian Nardin, Ginevra Panzetti & Enrico Ticconi, Irene Russolillo). Avalanche, which made its debut at the Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, is inspired by a dystopic universe, and presents a man and a woman who have survived an imminent catastrophe and “walk towards the dawn of a new planet, after hoisting the burden of their sadness onto their shoulders”.
Sofia Nappi and Adriano Bolognino are the winners of last year’s Biennale College Choreographers. Their debut is now confirmed in the commission for two new works by La Biennale.
Born in Naples in 1995, Adriano Bolognino, who has already authored several choreographic works, was trained in both classical and contemporary dance, and was a dancer with Marcos Morau from the La Veronal company, among others. Your Body is a Battleground is the title of the choreographic piece for La Biennale, inspired by the eponymous work by artist Barbara Kruger, in which the body in the programmatic title is the female body.
With training oriented towards contemporary dance, Sofia Nappi, born in Florence in 1994, earned her diploma in 2017 from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, then furthered her studies in courses with the Batsheva Dance Company and with Hofesh Shechter. Having danced in works by Alessio Silvestrin, Jon Ole Olstad, Brice Mousset, Alvin Ailey, Earl Mosley, Clifton Brown, Sidra Bell, Netta Yerushalmy, Juel D. Lane and Robert Moses, Nappi sought an autonomous direction winning third place at the Netherlands Choreography Competition 2018. Ima is the new work she will present at the Biennale Danza, “inspired by the complex simplicity of living, which is the reason why we keep charging ahead without ever getting enough”.
The last star, in terms of time, to shake up the French and European dance scene over the past ten years, Olivier Dubois, who has worked with Sasha Waltz, Jan Fabre, Angelin Preljocaj, the Cirque du Soleil before establishing his own company on the international scene, will bring Pour sortir au jour to Venice, an intimate solo about the memory of the body into which the very history of the art of dance is inscribed. A journey through the fragments of over 60 productions that review Dubois’ artistic history, seeking the artist through the anatomy of the performer.
Encounters at the Sale d’Armi and conversations following the performances with great artists: a mosaic of images, visions, stories, skills to foster a relationship open to knowledge and dialogue, with an audience that is aware and open to the experimentation with various expressive languages.
Finally, a cycle of screenings of short and feature-length films will be shown at the Arsenale to extend the perspective onto the world of dance and beyond dance.
