The eleventh edition of the INTERPLAY International Contemporary Dance Festival, a crossroads of the most innovative contemporary dance productions representative of the national and international new performance scene, will take place May 18 - 26, 2011.
It will host 26 companies from many different European countries (Holland, Germany, Spain, Belgium, France...) selected from important national and international festivals and showcases. For the first time, there will be young choreographers from Brazil and the U.S.A.; and there will be companies from the Italian regions of Emilia Romagna‚ Veneto‚ Lazio, Friuli - and of course, Piedmont - with 12 national debuts, 3 co-productions and two workshops.
In order to find a channel of communication for the younger generations, there will be two training workshops organized by MosaicoDanza Association and promoted by the Interplay Festival.
One is on critical writing, directed by the group of young critics Altre Velocità (Other Speeds) in collaboration with the CRUD and the DAMS department of the University of Turin, for university students; the other is on the choreographic writing of contemporary dance, conducted by the Dutch choreographer, Jens Van Daele, for professionals.
The shows hosted at INTERPLAY/11 will deal with the challenges we meet daily, and which become even more prominent in the year in which there will be celebrations for the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy, i.e. the values of Democracy, Tolerance and Cooperation.
25 companies from different parts of the world, countries with very different traditions and religions... that are all united by the the universal language of ART.
The performances will take place in three different theaters, the Astra, the Cavallerizza (Royal Stables, short wing) and the Fonderie Limone (Lemon Foundries), practically covering the various zones of the city... and also in urban spaces, including prestigious Vittorio Veneto
Square on Satuday May 21st, where we will present several performance events replicated in different spots in the square, using some store display windows and the arcades, as well as some restaurants. The day will be promoted in accordance with the organization Confesercenti which is sponsoring the project, and the restaurants which will offer cocktails on themes linked to the different countries around the world. The day will end with shows at the theaters in the short wing of the Royal Riding Stables in the evening.
The other site specific performance, closing the Festival on May 26th, will be at the GAM, Turin's Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, where the charming outdoor portico created by the artist Giulio Paolini will be used as a performance space.
We are coordinating the performance events together with the Museum, not only in order to involve and address different audiences, but also in an attempt to promote a multidisciplinary event linked to dance in a place dedicated to contemporary languages.
The inauguration of the festival will be at Astra Theater on May 18, with the national debut of the show by the Dutch choreographer Jens Van Daele (already critically acclaimed at last year's Interplay with the show Battre le Fer). In Brides for Peace, the electrical performance of Dutch choreographer pays homage to the human experience of the Milanese artist Pippa Bacca, who died for having blindly followed her heart to spread a message of peace and hope for a better future.
Again at Astra, Ann Van den Broek, the Belgian/French winner of the Swan Award with her Co(te)lette, deemed “the most impressive dance show of the 2007/2008 season”, will return to Interplay on May 20 with We Solo Men, a “masculine” work portraying the conflict between the desire to entertain and please and the inability to communicate. The show is hosted in collaboration with two other structures that the Interplay Festival has worked with for years, the Pugliese Public Theater circuit and Amat - Marche Theatrical Activities Association, and with whom we have organized an Italian tour as part of our events.
Magnificent Piazza Vittorio Veneto, the largest square in Piedmont, will be the site of the urban dance events (Blitz Metropolitani) on May 21, with 5 companies using locations such as store windows, restaurants, the arcades and even city buses passing through the square. Performers include the young Venetian choreographer Elisa Dal Corso, a finalist in the Venetian GD'A in 2008, two companies from Turin – the better known
Tardito/Rendina with a group work and the duo of the group Grimaco, winner in 2010 of the Regeneration Project of the Theatre System curated by the Turin Public Theater.
To enrich the day's calendar will be two companies of international fame: the highly anticipated work of the eclectic American performer Bill Shannon and the Spanish company Lanonima
Imperial.
The work of Bill Shanon, a conceptual interdisciplinary artist and disabled dancer, has its roots in street culture and the visual arts. His acrobatic dance on crutches has achieved a benchmark for its genre. His projects have been presented in festivals, museums, theaters and urban spaces throughout the world, such as the Sydney Opera House, Tate Liverpool Museum and the NYC Town Hall. He has also collaborated on choreography for Cirque du Soleil-Varerai. His numerous awards include a J. Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art Award.
The Catalan company Lanònima Imperial, a leading exponent of that Spanish region which has become known for its strong and physical style and continuing movement research under the direction of the acclaimed choreographer Juan Carlos Garcìa, celebrating the 25th year of his career in 2011. It has received awards and been co-produced by many international organizations (Vooruit Centre of Ghent in Belgium, Theater im Pfalzbau of Ludwigshafen / RH in Germany, Holland Dance Festival, Oriente-Occidente Festival (East/West) in Italy...) and also won the Catalan National Dance Prize (2000)and the Gran Prix of the VIII International Dance Festival in Zagrabia.
The day will conclude with three shows at night in the theatres of the short wing of Royal Riding Stables (Cavallerizza Reale), with works by two young international companies, the Israeli Yaron Shamir, resident in Germany for some time now, and the Brazilian Flavia Tapias, choreographers who have worked and trained with masters of such caliber as Jan Fabre, Sasha Waltz and William Forsythe.
The calendar also includes the result of a creative residency project created in collaboration between INTERPLAY festival and the choreographic center Correios em Movimento in Rio de Janeiro. The residency is made up of two phases: the first was in Rio de Janeiro in the month of August, 2010 and the conclusion will take place in MosaicoDanza Association's own performance space in May. The protagonists are two Brazilian dancers and two dancers from Turin, Toni Rodrigues, Samuel Frare, Aldo Torta and Stefano Botti, members of the company Tecnologia Filosofica.
For the evenings of May 23 – 25, the festival moves to the theaters inside the Limone Foundries in view of a mobility project open to contamination with the new contemporary languages: the first date, May 23rd, will be structured according to a proposal of a new model of vertical structure for performing. The shows will start at 7 pm and continue on into the night, using both the indoor and the charming outdoor spaces of the Foundries for urban dance performances, Dj sets and an aperitif / supper.
This is our attempt to make theatre come alive more as a place of another sort - a meeting place for dialogue with diverse audiences and heterogeneous performance modes, with the help of all the interior and exterior architectural spaces and not just those canonically used for shows.
The first part of the evening will present young international talents such as the Israeli choreographer Liat Waysbort, who lives in the Netherlands and is supported by the choreographic center Dansateliers, Daniel Linehan, a Belgian\American who has presented his work at major new dance and performing arts festivals in the U.S., Canada, and Europe (in Italy,he was praised by critics at the 2010 Vie Scena Contemporanea Festival in Modena) and the Brazilian Barbara Lima.
The second part of the May 23rd evening will present four Italian companies.
A new work making its national debut in the form of a study for the DNA Romaeuropa Festival will be presented by Simona Bertozzi, acclaimed interpreter of the latest performances of Virgilio Sieni. Winner of the GD'A Emilia Romagna Showcase '08, Simona was chosen for the international platform AEROWAVES 2009 in London.
Sonia Brunelli, winner of the GD’A Emilia Romagna 2008, works in the performing arts field paying particular attention to the physicality of sound, the mental roots of movement and the visual architecture. In 2010, the group won the World Prize with The Origin, a performance
conceived in collaboration with the London director Simon Vincenzi for the Sujet à Vif/Festival d’Avignon '08, and its production Pheidippides was chosen for the Marathon of the Unexpected, a new section dedicated to experimental experiences at the 7th Contemporary Dance Festival of the Venice Biennial.
Young Francesca Foscarini, who has already danced with ALDES/Roberto Castello, will present KALSH, a show that was named finalist at the Gd’A Veneto '09, presented in Europe as part of the Choreoroam ’10 project.
The evening will conclude with TarditoRendina presenting a new solo making its national debut: Il Compito (The Task), interpreted by Aldo Rendina and co-produced by Interplay Festival.
As always, we continue our collaboration with the ANTICORPI XL network, made up of organizations from 12 Italian regions for the support of young original dance.
May 24th will be the evening of eXpLo’: that is, the best groups selected from the Young Original Dance Showcase held every year in Ravenna in September, and of which Interplay Festival is the partner for Piedmont, along with Piedmont Theatrical Circuit.
And as always, there will be the artists chosen over the years at the Anticorpi XL Showcase, the protagonists of the closing of the festival at the GAM in Turin on May May 26th.
Choreographers exploring new performance languages such as Francesca Pennini of the CollettivO CineticO (2010 Equilibrio Prize finalist), Michela Minguzzi (2011 Equilibrio Prize finalist), Shuko, Silvia Gribaudi (winner of the 2009 GD’A Veneto award) and Marco D’Agostin (winner of the 2010 GD’A Veneto award) and Marta Bevilacqua (Premio Equilibrio Finalist in 2011). Morover form Turin , muldisciplinry and young Erika Di Crescenzo, she will experiment music language in her new creation La Bagarre... some of whom have already been designated as the spearheads of the new creativity. We also announce that the evening of ANTICORPI eXpLo’ - traces of new original dance, addressed to young emerging Italian talents, will include the new work by the group G.a.p., directed by Federica Pozzo (Moncalieri/Turin) as a window onto the young realities in Piedmont.
Events at the LIMONE FOUNDRIES will conclude on May 25th with the Catalan company Thomas Noone Dance, directed by Thomas Noone. A strong personality prominent in the “new dance” world, Thomas Noone studied first in London and then in Holland; he has danced for Flamand in Charleroi Danses/Plan K, then he moved to Barcelona where he founded his own group for which he has created fifteen works, including Still (1999 Ricardi Moragas award), Tread (XIII Certamen de Madrid award). In 2005, he received the Guglielmo Ebreo Prize and the special “audience” award for Crush. Since 2005, the company has had its residency at Sant Andreu Theater (SAT!) in Barcelona, and is sponsored by the city of Barcelona, the Generalitat Catalunya and the Spanish Ministry of Culture.
The networks
We wish to highlight that Interplay Festival is the only Italian partner that is a member of two international networks: the French festival Les Repérages−Lille which involves15 countries; and the two-year project of Dance Roads with five other international partners, to support the mobility of young choreographers. On a national level, Interplay is a member of the ANTICORPI Xl network, made up of 15 organizations from 12 Italian regions, with the aim of promoting and supporting the circuiting of the young dance scene nationally.