XXXVII edition of Bolzano Danza restarts from Swan Lake

After the singular experience of Eden in the summer of 2020, a project awarded for originality by Italian critics with the D&D Award, the Bolzano Danza 2021 Festival regains its traditional structure and essence starting from the archetypes. The title Swan, the quintessential symbol of ballet, identifies an edition focused on rewriting the classics of the ballet and musical repertoire of the last three centuries. Scheduled from 16 to 30 July in the halls of the Municipal Theater of Bolzano and in various places in the city and its surroundings, the XXXVII edition of the Bolzano Danza Festival presents itself as a variegated mosaic of masterpieces of the ballet and musical repertoire starting from Il Lago dei cigni, La Morte del cigno, Giselle, La Sagra della primavera, Mozart’s Requiem by leading choreographers on the international scene but also by young Italian talent. In total 29 appointments including 5 absolute premieres, 10 national premieres and 4 co-productions of the Festival. “Swan – explains the artistic director Emanuele Masi – is a festival of reinterpretations and redefinitions. The opening with our ‘associated company’ Gauthier Dance of Stuttgart immediately brings us to the heart of the themes put into play this year with four contemporary rewritings of Swan Lake. The pillars of this edition are then the original commissions of the remakes of The Death of the Swan by Mikhail Fokin and Camille Saint-Saëns and the return of ‘friendly’ artists such as Olivier Dubois and Alessandro Sciarroni, as well as the presence of works by two ‘teachers’ such as Maguy Marin and Lucinda Childs “. “Peculiar, being the Festival rib of the Haydn Foundation, the relationship with live music, which resulted in the co-production Requiem (Sià Karà) – added Masi – a work that combines the inspiration of the Franco-Tunisian choreographer Radhouane El Meddeb to the associated composer by Haydn Matteo Franceschini. A rewrite of Mozart’s Requiem for ten dancers of the Cuban MiCompañia, about forty elements of the Haydn Orchestra and live electronics “. Inauguration, therefore, on July 16 in the Great Hall of the Municipal Theater with the national premiere of Swan Lakes with the Gauthier Dance of Stuttgart. Four different reinterpretations in a contemporary key of the ballet of ballets, addressed with absolute freedom of expression starting from the themes put forward by the archetype of Petipa-Cajkovskij signed by the Israeli Hofesh Shechter (Swan Cake), by the Canadian Marie Chouinard (Le chant du cygne: le Lac), by the Spanish Cayetano Soto (title in definition) and by the German Marco Goecke (Shara Nu) .The original commission project The Dying Swan, a series of reinterpretations of the famous and iconic solo, expands the entire duration of the festival The death of the swan by Mikhail Fokin to music by Camille Saint-Saëns (which marks the 100th anniversary of his death), created for Anna Pavlova in 1907. They have rethought the title Kor’sia, Radhouane El Meddeb, Club Guy & Roni, Olivier Dubois, Camilla Monga, Chiara Bersani, Silvia Gribaudi to which are added the 16 different solos, live and digital, of The Dying Swans Project by Gauthier Dance presented in part in the theater in the evening called The Dyin g Swans Live Experience (Studio, 17 July) and partly on the monitors set up in the Don Bosco district of Bolzano for U-Game / Dying Swans (1-31 July). ‘Friends’ artists from Bolzano Danza will be protagonists with new works and songs cult. Hence the articulated presence of Olivier Dubois, the return of Alessandro Sciarroni with two distinct works, by Lali Ayguadé and Mattia Russo and Antonio de Rosa, or Kor’sia. To them we owe the new Giselle born in Madrid in 2020 co-produced by Bolzano Danza that projects the story of the peasant girl mad for love to the present day. Liquid and technology-mediated relationships make one fear that Giselle’s pure love can no longer exist in our time. It will be like this? (Teatro Comunale, 18 July, national premiere). On 20 July another Italian debut. Come Out, the pungent creation by Olivier Dubois for the Ballet de Lorraine based on the homonymous score by Steve Reich, reworked by François Caffenne. A dazzling mass choreography, which is an act of resistance to life and its deviations, wrapped in pink (Teatro Comunale). Olivier Dubois will also be the interpreter of his provocative performance duet Prêt à baiser on Stravinsky’s Spring Festival in the year in which the fifty years since the composer’s death occur (Antonio Dalle Nogare Foundation, 21 July) as well as the author and interpreter of one of his deaths. of the swan entitled Swan Blast premiered at the Festival (Studio, 20 July). The choreographic tradition is also perpetuated in the now blockbuster work by Alessandro Sciarroni Folk-s, re-appropriation in a performative-contemporary key of the Schuhplattler, the traditional Tyrolean dance. Already presented at the Festival 5 years ago as a site specific to Museion, the show will now be hosted in the Great Hall of the Municipal Theater (24 July). Furthermore, the Leone d’Oro 2019 of the Venice Biennale is the author of the hypnotic Dialogue Terzo: In a landscape for CollettivO CineticO on the homonymous score by John Cage. A game of crescendo and fading with the meditative hula hoop welcomed in the evocative setting of the terrace of the Cantina Kettmair in Caldaro, overlooking the vineyards (17 July). Ayguadé, at the Festival with his latest creation Hidden, co-produced by Bolzano Danza with TemporadaAlta of Barcelona. Concluding part of the trilogy on identity of which Bolzano has hosted all the stages, Hidden shows through the pregnant and dynamic dance theater characteristic of the choreographer the unconscious, and how the present is influenced by the past (Studio, 26 July). European and world panorama for over forty years Maguy Marin has been a protagonist at the Festival in the rearrangement of its historic Duo d’Eden by Michele Merola’s Italian MM Contemporary Dance Company, a suspended two-way step of rare beauty that sees one mingle in the the bodies of the two performers (Teatro Studio, 18 July). Another icon of the late twentieth century, Lucinda Childs, is present at the Festival with Tempo Vicino, a 2009 creation for the Ballet de Marseille now taken up by the company with a new cast and presented as part of the plural evening Childs / Carvalhho / Lasseindra / Doherty commissioned from the company by the Théâtre de la Ville and the Théâtre du Châtelet in national premiere in Bolzano Dance. Here the founder of postmodern Lucinda Childs joins the Irish rising star Oona Doherty, Silver Lion at the 2021 Venice Biennale, the queer icon of French voguing Lasseindra Ninja and the pictorial universe of the Portuguese artist Tania Carvalho (Teatro Comunale, July 22nd). A cornerstone of musical literature, Wolfang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem finds new life in the rewriting for orchestra and live electronics of the Associated Artist of the Haydn Foundation Matteo Franceschini for a global creation premiered at the Festival involving the Franco-Tunisian choreographer Radhouane El Meddeb, the Cuban Micompañia, the Haydn Orchestra led by the baton of Maestro Jean Deroyer and a group of local amateurs (Teatro Comunale, 28 July). It refers to the past and to an exceptional one-man-show Best Regards by Marco D’Agostin, a solo that is a dance letter of farewell and gratitude for the stage director, founder of DV8, Nigel Charnock who died prematurely in the August 2012 (Study, July 29). For the first time at the Festival, Club Guy & Roni, a Dutch group that has made interdisciplinarity its track and a free and violent physicality a distinctive language, will be at the Festival with the work Tetris_mon amour where high decibel electronic music meets the passion for the video game Tetris that has marked several generations and of course the choreographer Roni Haver (Teatro Comunale, 30 July). The Club will then involve the festival audience with Swan Lake The Game (Parco dei Cappuccini, 20 July), a game in which each spectator will contribute to the choice of the Swan Lake ending. Bringing the public to a virtual platform, Hotel Nite, each spectator (graphically a dragonfly) through devices chooses and influences the collective vision. By building his own narrative, the user identifies a story to follow at the end of which, answering questions, he will make choices that will influence the general vision: who will be the black swan? How will the story end? For the first time in Bolzano Danza it will be possible to experience the Game in a cinema format under the stars with the possibility of voting from your mobile phone and by majority choosing the crucial junctions of this Swan Lake outside the box. Two artists in affirmation, the Israeli Shahar Binyamini and the Spaniard Jacob Gomez bring the outcome of their most current research to the Festival. Binyamini, who grew up with Batsheva, signs the duet Evolve for two extraordinary performers born from a research on the concept of growth, in an artistic and scientific sense (Teatro Studio, July 19), while Jocob Gomez, starting from his autobiography – has five sisters – prepares a female quintet entitled Meohadim, where movement, singing and acting tell contradictions and similarities of life (Studio, 23 July). At the Parco delle Semirurali, Silvia Gribaudi’s funny Graces, winner of the Danza & Danza Award “best Italian production, is staged 2019 “The three Graces of Canova, here declined in the masculine, unfold an investigation into beauty. “If in classicism – Gribaudi wonders – beauty was harmony of forms, where do we find this harmony in our everyday life?” (July 27). The Turin-based author also presents at the Festival her version of the Death of the Swan, Peso Piuma (26 July, Parco dei Cappuccini) preceded on 23 and 24 July (Centro Trevi) by the experiential installation SWAN-VR moving bodies. Museion, which seals the happy collaboration between the Festival and the prestigious city institution dedicated to contemporary art, was invited to the performance Untitled 2021 by Maria Hassabi, a Cypriot artist, active in New York, creator of a choreographic practice based on sculptural pose and the temporal dilation included in the solo exhibition of Jimmy Robert, an artist who has often referred to dance both in his performances and in his verb-visual works. On show at Museion will be his 2020 Plié and Veneer referring to the famous Trio A by Yvonne Rainer (Museion, 28 July), among others.