Interplay, the festival that brings companies and choreographers from around the world to Turin in the spring, with shows in theaters as well as site-specific events in museums and performances in urban spaces of the city, returns from May 18 to June 10, 2016.
30 companies from 15 foreign countries and many Italian regions will be hosted, presenting 11 national debuts and 14 regional debuts... companies that received important awards and participated in prestigious events and festivals dedicated to the new generation of contemporary dance.
The complexity of contemporary life is intertwined with our daily lives, especially in a Europe that is changing and showing new wounds, inevitably reflected in the artistic expressions and the social role that these take on. This has led us to meditate on the meaning of aesthetic experience today, on the choices that an artistic director has to make, and once again, the importance of supporting the arts and culture in order to strengthen intercultural dialogue among artists as a significant added value in respect of reciprocal diversity.
So how are the new generations of choreographers reacting, where is artistic research in the global scenario of a stagnant social and economic crisis heading? Are there any trends in common? What (creative) strategies for (real) survival have been triggered? The latest edition of Interplay responds to these questions by designing a range of events with heterogeneous and personal solutions, which all have an intensity of motivation and determination in common, resulting from their movement research, whether purely experimental, poetic, lyrical, ironic, or aesthetic.
On closer inspection there are similarities, and the INTERPLAY festival gives us a hypnotic fractal design that goes beyond the differences of gender, spaces, and the audiences involved.
The festival starts at the Teatro Astra (May 18 and 20), moves on to the Fonderie Teatrali Limone (May 23, 27, and 28), then moving on to the Lavanderia a Vapore in Collegno (May 25 and 31), whereas the Metropolitan Blitzes will take place on various places, from Piazza Vittorio Veneto (May 21) to the site-specific events at the MEF Museo Ettore Fico (June 10), as well as in the OUT (outdoor) areas of some theaters.
SET TO MUSIC
We will listen to the electronic sounds of the star on the rise LORENZO SENNI, the author of experimental works and a regular guest of the Club To Club electronic music festival and the RAI NuovaMusica, who composed the soundtrack of HIGHER, a work for 3 performers by MICHELE RIZZO (NL/IT).
Young Italian-Dutch choreographer, Rizzo met with a huge success during the Dansdagen Festival in Maastricht, dedicated to the most interesting choreographers in Holland. After graduating with a diploma in choreography from the SNDO School for New Dance, since 2012 he has been supported by the choreographic center ICKamsterdam directed by Emio Greco, and since 2015, by the Dutch fund AFK (Int/16> May 18).
We shall also be enchanted by the music in LOOM, the new duo by YUVAL PICK (IL/FR), the choreographer who became the director of CCN de Rillieux-la-Pape after Maguy Marin and who enthralled the audience of Interplay 2012 with his magnetic work SCORE. Loom was created in close collaboration with the composer NICO MUHLY, whose works have been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera in New York and perhaps which we have heard in the choreographic works by Benjamin Millepied.
Pick's perception of Muhly's music is manifested through the work's structure, a kind of scaffolding that the choreographer seeks to bring to light through a refined choreographic language (Int/16> May 27).
Live music played by 4 percussionists accompanies the solo by DANIELE ALBANESE, (commissioned by Unione Musicale and Torinodanza in 2015). Drumming Solo is a work that explores the idea of intensity through the close synergy between dance, movement and music. The composition in this case is by STEVE REICH, the father of minimalism who received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Music from the Venice Biennale in 2014 (Int/16> May 28).
Athletes of the scene, that's how the Italian critic Massimo Marino defined the dancers of Ossidiana, recent creation of the company Fabrizio Favale Le Supplici.
Not a casual observation since the talented performers are both perfectly in control and ready to hyperbolic metamorphoses made by a gesture, a bending, a lack of balance. The choreography starts a beautiful dialogue with the live music of DANIELA CATTIVELLI, musician, composer and performer with a heterogeneous education and career. Starting from the observation of those particular phenomena that we find in nature, where the forms are, so to speak, incomplete, or give rise to other forms before they have reached what we expected, Favale creates dance sculptures, dislocated and recomposed, as Marino suggests.
After ten years spent as a dancer for the company Virgilio Sieni, in 1999 Fabrizio Favale founded the company The Supplici. From the following years his works are invited to perform in important international scene as La Biennale di Venezia, Suzanne Dellal Tel Aviv, Expo 2010 Shanghai, SIDance Seoul, Tokyo Kitazawa Town Hall, The RED Serpiente Mexico, Santarcangelo Festival, Gender Bender, Danae Festival Milan, Festival of Edinburgh, Internationale Tanzmesse NRW Dusseldorf, Aperto Festival Reggio Emilia. The works Un ricamo fatto sul nulla and Il gioco del gregge di capre receive awards for choreography in Spain, Germany and Serbia. Between 2005 and 2007 he created in residence at the Teatro Comunale di Casalecchio di Reno by ERT the project Mahabharata - selected episodes in which collaborates with Francesca Caroti, Roberta Mosca and David Kern (Forsythe Company) and with the group MK. In 2013, the Company is among the 4 groups Italian selected for The Italian Show Case Dance Base Fringe Festival of Edinburgh, Scotland. Ossidiana was selected for NID Italian Platform and has been invited to Biennale Dance Lyon in 2016 while the new creation CIRCEO will be co-produced by Théâtre national de Chaillot, Paris. (Int/16> May 31).
REALITY AND FICTION
Reality is mixed with fiction when stories that really happened are told through choreography and reveal their authenticity only at the end - for example, through the projection of a video made by security cameras. That's what happens in Collective Loss of Memory by the Czech company RootLessRoot and DOT 504, one of the most awarded groups in Europe, where the 5 sensational dancers confront one another through circus movements, poses and moves that recall Greek-Roman wrestling or martial arts, while viewers are forced to reflect on their role as a passive spectator of scenes that really happened in a metropolis... that could be their own. Constantly hovering between conflicting feelings of pleasure, discomfort, and humor, Collective Loss of Memory was elected the SHOW OF THE YEAR of the Czech Dance Platform organized by Tanec Praha Festival (Int/16> May 18).
The Greek choreographer EURIPIDES LASKARIDIS shows us another reality with RELIC, a performance full of humor and poignant irony, but also with subtle attacks against his country, Greece, today, which lead us to reflect on the concept of ethics and civilization.
For the first time in Italy with this performance, Euripides was nominated Best Actor in 1998 at the Greek Theatre Critics Association Awards. Chosen for Aerowaves 2015, he has been on tour with his dance show performing throughout Europe. He participated in the prestigious international festival Kalamata in Greece, as did Patricia Apergi, a choreographer programmed within the last edition of Interplay, and on the occasion of Expo 2015 he worked with Robert Wilson in his staging of the Odyssey at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan (Int/16> May 23).
Another offspring of the crisis is the marvelously cheeky and ironic Idiot-Syncrasy, the new creation by and with MORENO SOLINAS and IGOR URZELAI. Focused on desires in the time of frustrations, the authors involve the audience in their "role playing", leading them to rethink and pursue their own happiness, through relationships with others and by committing themselves to overcome every moment of dissatisfaction. The duo has received numerous acknowledgements and awards, including nominations at the 2015 National Dance Awards and the 2015 Total Theatre Awards, and they were part of Aerowaves in 2011, 2013, and 2015. The company was selected for the showcase of the British Council for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2015 and for the English Dance Platform in Cardiff in 2016 (Int/16> May 31).
Tackling the problems of everyday life that one has to face and share with courageous initiative is the hyperactive, prismatic body that deals with all the stimuli of the world, embodied by the frenetic, breathless pace of the solo Everything is OK by Marco D'Agostin. This show was also selected by the prestigious Aerowaves network for 2016. Marco studied with internationally renowned masters such as Yasmin Godder, Nigel Charnock and Emio Greco. He createdViola, which won the Audience Award and the Jury Prize in the GD'A Veneto Awards competition in 2010, and co-authored Spic & Span, which received the Special Mention at the 2011 Scenario Awards, and he was a finalist at the 17MasDanza Dance Festival (Int/16> May 28).
Somewhere in between reality and fiction, but this time inspired by TV home shopping, is a character that inspired Andrea Costanzo Martini, a young Turin choreographer better known abroad than in Italy, who has been living in Israel for years, also dancing with the Batsheva Dance Company. Martini is the choreographer of the ironic, award-winning solo What Happened in Torino, a show that has received several awards, including FIRST PRIZE FOR BOTH DANCE AND CHOREOGRAPHY AT THE International Stuttgart Solo Competition and the Audience Award at the 2015 MAS DANZA Festival in Gran Canaria, Spain. (Int/16> May 31).
WOMEN IN DANCE
There will be yet another focus on the international scene with the significant presence of two women.
The dynamic, original and slightly absurd choreographic research of the Israeli-born Dutch choreographer LIAT WAYSBORT is at the heart of Please me Please – The Solo, danced by Ivan Ugrin. The central theme of transformation is addressed clearly and unambiguously by the choreographer, who entrusts the task of conveying meanings and feelings to the body and intelligence of the performer. Please me Please won the AUDIENCE AWARD AT THE HR Platform IN Zagabria and was deemed "a masterpiece" by the Spanish press, and it was scheduled in the RomaEuropa festival in 2015 as well as being selected for the 2015 Aerowaves network. Liat Waysbort began her career as a dancer at the Batsheva Dance Company, where she danced for nine years. She moved to the Nederlands to complete her studies in choreography, and in 2005 began her creative career at the Dansateliers Rotterdam, alongside her first creations (Int/16> May 23).
Spanish choreographer ROSER LOPEZ ESPINOSA, has sculpted a miniature opus of clock-work precision in the duo Lowland, an evocative, hypnotic, meticulous dance. It is a strenuous physical duel of pure movement, where the two performers move with strong technique and a great listening capacity, evoking the flight of birds in search of freedom. The company has garnered international recognition with the First Prize at the MASDANZA Festival, and at the choreography competitions of Burgos-NY and Madrid, and it was chosen for the Aerowaves European tour. In 2011 the dance magazine Suzy-Q ranked Espinosa among the five most promising young choreographers of the Spanish scene. The show Lowland is a co-production with Mercat de les Flors. (Int/16> May 20).
URBAN DANCE
INTERPLAY is one of the few festivals that presents A WIDE RANGE OF URBAN DANCE ALONGSIDE ITS TRADITIONAL PROGRAMMING IN THEATRES, as it strongly believes in its artistic efficacy, which is why it has also joined the international network Ciudades Que Danzan.
We show dancers who turn their own human frailty into a great virtuosity for the aware viewer, but also and above all, for a random audience, attracting different kinds of audiences and bringing them closer to the language of contemporary dance. This is all done in order to enhance the extemporaneousness of an encounter between art and urban contexts – from the stateliness of Piazza Vittorio Veneto to the post-industrial atmosphere created by the Fonderie Limone or the Lavanderia a Vapore in Collegno.
HumanHood comes to Interplay with Nomadis, a project conceived by Rudi Cole – a performer in Akram Khan's production Vertical Road and in the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics – and Julia Robert, who works in the United Kingdom in the Jasmin Vardimon Company and in Spain in collaboration with the company UmmaUmma Dance.
Returning after their great success in the 2013 edition of the festival are Candelaria Antelo and Arthur Bernard Bazin with their amazing work TE ODIERO (I will hate you). Dancers for internationally acclaimed choreographers such as Sharon Fridman, the two artists founded HURyCAN company, creating shows with flawless technique and irrepressible energy.
The highly original L'ENVERS is created by the duo Christine Daigle and Mathias Raymond: she is a Canadian who performed in La damnation of Faust by Robert Lepage, and he is Swiss who in the past collaborated with Cirque du Soleil.
The company Los INnato hails from Costa Rica but has created strong synergies with Spain, homeland par excellence of urban dance. ETEREA, the energetic duo to be presented at the festival, won the First Prize in the Competition of Contemporary Dance Creation of Solos and Duets SóLODOS En Danza / Barva - Costa Rica - 2013.
The outdoor spaces of the Fonderie Limone will host a real surprise for the audience by the Portuguese choreographer of Brazilian origins Lander Patrick in a site-specific version of his show Cascas d'OvO (eGGshells), which is an ironic and thrilling unique blind date that continues at a crescendo, recounting an intimate relationship through a totally physical and rhythmical dialogue between the bodies of the two protagonists (Int/16> May 23).
Always in the Fonderie Limone's OUT spaces, the Spanish group Physical Momentum Project returns to Interplay but with an even greater recognition for their enthralling Postskriptum, which won the Second Prize and the Audience Prize at the 2015 Certamen Coreogràfic Sabadell in Barcelona.
The fruitful collaboration between the festival, choreographer Daniele Ninarello and MCF Belfioredanza has been renewed. They will present a site-specific performance based on extemporaneousness and improvisation in the OUT spaces of the Fonderie Limone, which is the result of the creative path developed together with the 10 dancers involved. (Int/16> May 28).
PROMISING YOUNG CHOREOGRAPHERS
In order to support and enhance the PROMISING YOUNG CHOREOGRAPHERS OF CONTEMPORARY DANCE, Interplay has become part of important national and international networks and constantly activates support for projects and the promotion of choreographers in whom it recognizes a special talent.
The festival will host artists selected through the international biennial project DANCE ROADS, the European network (FR, NL, UK, IT, RO) to which Mosaico Danza belongs and which has gained a new partner from Romania this year.
The artists selected for the 2016 edition will meet the local dance community on May 23 to share their work practices and present their creations on May 25 in the setting of the Lavanderia a Vapore in Collegno.
Claudia Catarzi is an Italian choreographer whom Interplay, with the Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo, has chosen to support for the international tour. Already known to Turin audiences as an interpreter of the creations by Ambra Senatore, her piece QUI, ORA investigates how the performer's body reacts on stage to situations created by the space, the costumes, the sounds, and the proximity of the audience. She was a finalist in the 2010 Equilibrio Awards, and her work Qui, ora won the 2013 Emergenze! Fabbrica Europa and Corto in Danza awards, and received an honorable mention from the jury of MASDANZA XVIII Edition of International Contemporary Dance Festival in the Canary Islands. This work was selected in 2014 for the NID Platform New Platform of the Italian Dance and for Aerowaves Spring Forward Festival.
Joining her in the touring festival will be the promising Dutch choreographer Jasper van Luijk, an ironic duo from France, Cie Adequate, and the director, performer, and choreographer Gwyn Emberton from the United Kingdom, whereas Cristina Lilienfeld inaugurates the new collaboration with the National Centre of Dance in Bucharest.
In 2013/2015 Dance Roads was the winner of the EUROPE CULTURE CALL 2007/13-STRAND 1.2.1. COOPERATION PROJECTS and in view of the next call, the network is now working on expanding the project with the involvement of new European partners.
ANNAMARIA AJMONE will be the extra Dance Roads Guest Star on the evening of May 25 at Lavanderia a Vapore. Currently considered one of the most talented artists in the Italian scene, she is both a performer and choreographer and has worked with leading choreographers in significant events and festivals, such as the 2015 Venice Biennale and the 2015 Romaeuropa Festival, without neglecting her own creations. Her style is very personal, simultaneously scathing and sinuous. Her projects always start from her own experience, from the geometry of her body, and from the choreographic rhythm that builds on this, coming together with the architecture of the spaces where she works and connecting them with that of her body. The winner of the Danza&Danza Young Performer Award, and following the artistic residency that Mosaico Danza organized for her at the Institute of Italian Culture in Paris, on the evening Interplay has dedicated to Dance Roads, she will bring TRIGGER – LATO A, a site-specific work to be performed in the foyer of Lavanderia a Vapore. (Int/16> May 25).
The shows selected for the 2015 Showcase of Italian Young Original Dance, curated by Anticorpi XL network, include performances by three exciting young artists, each with significant experience as both interpreters and choreographers.
Why are we so f***ing dramatic?, which investigates gender identity with an almost sociological approach, was created by the Italian Francesca Penzo (an amazing performer in Enzo Cosimi's Calore, and a member of the collective Fattoria Vittadini), and by the Israeli-Chilean Tamar Grosz (a dancer in the Bathsheba Ensemble Company as well as in shows by Idan Cohen, Maya Levi, Sofia Krantz, Sharon Ayal, Ohad Nahrin, and Kiani Del Valle).
They have been residing in Berlin since 2013, and their work uses extremely courageous choreographic and dramaturgical language, interacting expertly with choreographed movement, narration, and use of performance space (Int/16> May 27).
The sarcasm in TRISTISSIMO accompanies us towards the end of the "perfect day" in the "perfect world", while making us smile and think about stories with happy endings. Created by C&C (Carlo Massari and Chiara Taviani), an independent duo that made its debut in the Balletto Civile company directed by Michela Lucenti, this work has received numerous awards including the Palco Aperto Pim OFF Award, the Jury Prize at HiverOclytes/Les Hivernales, second prize at the International Competition for choreography in Hannover, second prize for choreography at Corto in Danza, second prize from the Jury at the Zawirowania Dance competition in Warsaw, the Audience Award in Khonzert Theatre in Bern, Switzerland, and the Special Award for Choreography/Roma Danza Awards in 2015 (Int/16> May 28).
Finally, Francesco Colaleo, a dancer with the Zappalà Danza company and with Ismael Ivo, who has embarked on a path as a choreographer and moved to France where he works with Maxime Freixas, winning several awards in 2015 including the Outlet Award (ACS Abruzzo), the Corto in Danza award, and he was chosen for the Tobina Festival in Paris.
He created the duo Re-Garde, danced with Freixas, using an extremely physical choreographic language within a controlled linguistic code to dramaturgically investigate the strength of opposition.
INTERPLAY AND MEF - ETTORE FICO MUSEUM, DANCE AND ART
Following in the footsteps of the most INNOVATIVE INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS of interaction and integration between the PERFORMING ARTS AND VISUAL ARTS in UNCONVENTIONAL SPACES, such as Contemporary Art Museums, the LAST EVENT of the festival will be on June 10 at the MEF - Ettore Fico Museum, with three different choreographic approaches and outcomes but united by a highly creative quality.
The result of a careful reconstruction project of part of the former INCET building and deemed the Best New Italian Museum in 2014, the MEF will once again host a special day of site-specific events developed in close synergy with its current exhibitions.
Giovanni Leonarduzzi, a break dancer since 1997, is one of the most respected members of experimental dance worldwide and he represented Italy in the finals of Just Debout in Paris in 2007 and 2008. Ci sono cose che vorrei davvero dirti is a letter to his son Gabriele, written in dance.
Senza Confini di Pelle is a group from Turin that has collaborated on many important projects, such as Metamorphoses, the cooperation project with the support of the European Union Cultural program, together with La Briqueterie (Vitry sur Seine), Les Brigittines (Brussels), and CK Zamek (Poznan).
Possibili Derive is a solo that will be staged at the MEF as part of a larger project on the use of selfies as a representation of our existential condition entitled Selfie MySelf.
Gianluca Girolami, who works in Italy and France and also conducted a workshop in Burkina Faso, has shaped his work «M» 1, poi 2, poi 3 as three progressive moments in which dancing takes on a life force, like a pathway towards light, hope, and happiness, and which has been created especially for museums' spaces.
SYNERGIES AND COLLABORATIONS IN THE AREA
We are continuing our projects and collaborations parallel to Interplay, besides the aforementioned international network Dance Roads, with the aim of fostering intercultural dialogue and the circulation of young artists in Europe; there are also projects in synergy with the national network Anticorpi XL involving 35 groups from 15 different regions, enabling strategic actions to be coordinated at the national level.
Our collaborations with local organizations are increasing and stronger, consolidating the project synergy between those involved in order to optimize the sharing of their respective events and shared projects.
With The Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo Circuito regionale multidisciplinare we share a number of projects in the network as well as those related to the Dance Residencies at the Lavanderia a Vapore in Collegno, part of the new MiBACT and Regions agreement and of which we are co-partners.
Mosaico Danza has always had a close synergy with TORINODANZA, the festival directed by Gigi Cristoforetti, working to support the emerging realities in Italy, and with Paolo Mohovich, director of PALCOSCENICO DANZA included in Teatro Piemonte Europa, for projects aimed at supporting promising local choreographers. Instead, we are undertaking a new collaboration with the MIRABILIA Festival dedicated to circus arts and performing arts directed by Fabrizio Gavosto, for those international artists involved in Interplay's urban dance section.
In addition, in 2016 we also established a collaboration with the festival CONCENTRICA coordinated by different parties in the area, through the integrated support for the show Tristissimo of the company C&C which will be presented at both events, as a short format for Interplay and a long version for Concentrica in the provincial area, will thus be experiencing a new co-ordination for the dissemination of contemporary dance, even outside the urban context, rewarding the quality and expressive originality of emerging companies.
AUDIENCE EDUCATION
THE YOUNG AUDIENCE EDUCATION PROJECT, YC4D Youngest Critics for Dance, directed by Mosaico Danza and produced in partnership with the online magazine of performing arts Krapp's Last Post and Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo, has expanded to include all the dance festivals that take place in Piedmont > Torinodanza, Palcoscenico Danza, I Punti Danza, Stagione Open 24/7 at the Lavanderia a Vapore and Interplay festival.
YOUNGEST CRITICS FOR DANCE is a completely innovative project in the field, aiming to introduce young people to both the language of contemporary dance, thereby developing a careful and critical eye regarding the artistic proposals, and to critical and journalistic communication on the network. The project involves both secondary school students and university students, in collaboration with the DAMS Department and the University of Turin.
This initiative is also in keeping with the principles of the GOVERNMENT which has announced that this year one of its educational objectives is the enhancement of skills in the practice and culture of music, the arts, cinema, and live theater, particularly DANCE.
DANCER TRAINING
Workshop on May 25 and 26 at Belfiore Danza
The objectives planned for the URBAN DANCE workshop held by Spanish company Physical Momentum Project are to offer the many local dancers and choreographers training opportunities and stimulate the artistic interest of the community. The workshop has been organized by INTERPLAY at Belfiore Danza, with special attention being paid to the human body working in urban spaces.
Physical Momentum Project is the scenic platform and the artistic conception of Francisco Córdova Azuela, active as a choreographer and performer in both Mexico and Spain. Created in 2007, the company developed its particular identity through continuous research and transformation of the different languages of dance.
Francisco Córdova Azuela is the founder of the Association of Performing Arts of Mexico (APAM) as well as manager of the project Técnicas de Movimiento in Mexico. In 2012, the rankings of the Periodico Reforma y El Universal classified him among the seven promising young talents of the Mexican dance scene. He has developed a personal working method called Body-Action/Movement-Relation which he uses in his training courses and workshops organized by national institutions, dance schools, museums, and art galleries. He has worked as a choreographer, performer, and teacher in Mexico, the USA, Canada, Spain, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and France.
The company has won a number of awards including the Second Prize and the Audience Award of Certamen Choreographic Sabadell in Barcelona in 2015.
Kiko Lopez Juan. A dancer originally from Valencia, Spain, he now resides in Barcelona.
After receiving multidisciplinary training ranging from hip hop to contemporary dance to African dance, he attended the major dance schools and facilities in London, New York, Los Angeles, France, and Spain. He is a member of the KULBIK DANCE COMPANY and the winner of the Spanish TV talent show Tu sí que vales. A dancer who is highly in demand, he has also participated in advertising campaigns for Google, Desigual, and Coca Cola.
His constant training in different countries has given rise to an evolution of his own style which combines a hip hop base with the precision and technique of ballet and the diversity of movement, agility, and expressive power of contemporary dance.
Natalia Casorati / Artistic Director