In Reggio Emilia, dance meets art as a multiplier of evocations

Palazzo da Mosto in Reggio Emilia hosts from November 12, 2021 to January 16, 2022 the exhibition Horizons of the Body. Art / Dance / Virtual Reality, promoted by the Palazzo Magnani Foundation and the National Dance Foundation - Aterballetto. It is an unprecedented project that intends to unite visual, performing arts and technology in an innovative encounter between dance and visual arts: art, with the works of thirteen contemporary artists invited to the spaces of Palazzo da Mosto; dance, with MicroDances conceived by five international choreographers in a dialogue with the works; and technology, with virtual and immersive tools that will allow visitors to continue to watch the performances, staged live only on the opening and closing days, for the duration of the exhibition.

Curated by Marina Dacci, the exhibition itinerary winds its way through eight rooms of Palazzo da Mosto, placing danced installations (the MicroDances) in dialogue with about thirty works of contemporary art by thirteen artists-Leonardo Ankel Vandal, Bianco and Valente, Fabrizio Cotognini, Toni Fiorentino, Silvia Giambrone, Gianluca Malgeri, Matteo Montani, Mustafa Sabbagh, Vincenzo Schillaci, Namsal Sedlecki, Sissi and Giovanni Termini. Their works, by vocation and assonance, are placed side by side with six MicroDances by five choreographers: Saul Daniele Ardillo, Ina Lesnanowski, Philippe Kratz, Angelin Preljocai, Diego Tortelli. Performances of a few minutes, for one or two, three performers, intended for confined spaces and exhibition use.

“The pairing of dance and art is not unusual,” stresses Marina Dacci, curator of the exhibition part, “but in this project additional new elements are grafted in which the physicality of the dancers and the matter of art are combined with an immersive virtual technology that allows us to address, with different tools, the proxemics between dancer and spectator. This project is conceived, from the beginning, as an equal exchange. Art, in this context, is not proposed as a ’scenographic decoration’ of dance, but rather as an enriching element, a multiplier of evocations and suggestions that unfolds in a coherent parallel path. These reciprocities, made of intersections and overlaps, of multiple visual and sound stimuli, generate resonances that encourage the visitor to have a powerful experience.”

The six MicroDances are part of a project by Gigi Cristoforetti: a corpus of thirteen short performances produced by the National Dance Foundation, at the urging of the Palazzo Magnani Foundation, entrusted to twelve national and international choreographers, both young and established. The premiere presentation of this corpus took place in Athens on October 9 and 10, 2021, as part of the European project An ideal city, while the first Italian performances of some of the microdances are planned precisely on the occasion of the Reggio Emilia exhibition, a city to which they will return for a full staging during 2022.

"The six MicroDances,“ Marina Dacci points out, ”as well as the artists’ works (some of them created especially for this edition), question the definition of personal identity and that of living space. Evoking and knowing how to retain the historical traces that are our indispensable mnestic roots; bringing contradictions and conflicts to light in a critical key, triggering processes of evolution, sometimes painful but liberating that speak of how we are and how we could be. Experiencing claustrophobic suffocation, seeking protection and new balances, constructing different relational geographies that arise from the relationship with a man-made landscape and a “closed” style of view to fertile relationships with the environment and with others, opening reflections on how we live and where we would like to be. The whole project, then, is geared toward tracing the complex connections that run through us: from spirituality to rituality, from mythology to history, from social and environmental short-circuits in which the body, real or implied, is engaged in its attempt to evolve, to seek new physical and psychic spaces, embracing transformation as a cathartic element. As varied as the expressions and approaches presented in choreography and art may be, it is the process of birth, enfranchisement and regeneration that underlies all these mise en acte , imbued with a sense of ineffable mystery."

For more info: www.palazzomagnani.it

Image: FND Aterballetto, MicroDanze, Shelter (choreography by Saul Daniele Ardillo). Ph.Credit Celeste Lombardi

In Reggio Emilia, dance meets art as a multiplier of evocations

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