Bologna, coming up with eight video clips that bring dance to museum halls

In Bologna, dance enters museums. This is the Danza e Danze project curated by Vittoria Cappelli and Monica Ratti, included within the third edition of Dancin’Bo, and involving four museums of the Istituzione Bologna Musei, which for the occasion have been transformed into an exceptional stage in which to open up and dialogue with the language of dance. As a result, eight videos were made and disseminated on the communication channels of the four museums: the Collezioni Comunali d’Arte, MAMbo - Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, and Museo Civico Medievale.

The idea was born in the pandemic months: Dancin’Bo, an event with choreography and performances traveling through the center of Bologna was in fact transformed in all respects into a broadcast for the Bolognese web TV Sport2u, while the performances were transformed into video clips made in different places with the aim of offering a showcase for the beauty of art and dance. Sharing the participatory and inclusive dimension of the festival, the Istituzione Bologna Musei proposed Dancin’Bo to “invade” some historic places with the contagious joy of dance, and so the four museums welcomed in their spaces the performances of guest dancers who made rhythm, music and poetry of gesture resonate in harmony in the alienating everydayness of silent spaces absent of visitors.

The project aims to develop a relationship with the creative and performative process of choreographic art and to create contaminations between the heterogeneous technical and stylistic languages of classical and contemporary dance and the characteristics of each museum context, traversed and experienced in its own specific collection heritage and spatial-architectural structure. In the choreographic compositions, the expressive forms of the performers’ movements and bodies were thus inspired by the exploration of museums, often using their structural elements as decisive dramaturgical and narrative tools.

A total of eight videos were shot in museums, five of which (three at the Municipal Art Collections and two at MAMbo) were produced by General Warnings. The remaining three videos, at the Museo Civico Archeologico and the Museo Civico Medievale, were made by the young talents of the two dance schools Flash Dance Academy (Bologna) and Nuovo Laboratorio Danza (San Lazzaro di Savena), again from an idea of Vittoria Cappelli, who in this way wanted to reiterate once again her great sensitivity to art and museums, a figure that has marked her long career as a successful entrepreneur in the cultural field, characterized by a tenacious desire to promote and enhance Italy’s environmental and historical beauty.

The statements

“This year Dancin’Bo has changed its formula, in full compliance with health regulations, moving from the squares to the web,” says Matteo Lepore, Councillor for Culture of the Municipality of Bologna. “It was a success both in terms of the quality of the videos that were presented and the number of people who viewed them. Dance and museum venues proved to be a winning combination, and the artists made the most of these extraordinary places. I thank Vittoria Cappelli and Monica Ratti for donating these videos to our museums, now they can be seen by all the people who come in to visit our exhibition sites and through the communication channels of the museums themselves.”

“Museums,” says Roberto Grandi, president of Istituzione Bologna Musei, “tell their stories through the stories of their works and thanks to the other artistic languages that in a performative way are increasingly crossing them. In this case, the language of dance with performers who, in dialogue with the works and museum spaces, have created a new and original narrative. Vittoria Cappelli and Monica Ratti generously donated five of these videos to the Bologna Musei Institution, and Giulia Volta and Claudia Rota did the same with videos by students from their own dance schools. A gift that enhances the promotion of the museums and the city of Bologna that these museums host.”

Explain Vittoria Cappelli and Monica Ratti: “The Danza e Danze project, included within the third edition of Dancin’Bo, originally envisaged only the involvement of the professional realities and associations, both cultural and sporting, of Bolognese Dance in all its aspects. During the preparation of the project we thought of further enhancing the artistic aspect, using dance to narrate the art and beauty of a city by making five videos in collaboration with the Istituzione Bologna Musei. This is our gift to the city of Bologna and the museums that hosted us, grateful for the excitement we experienced.”

Giulia Volpe, artistic director of the School of Dance and Performance Flash Dance Academy in Bologna, also on behalf of teacher Isabella Sorino and the dancers involved in the experience, underlines the thanks “for the availability and the unique opportunity to be able to dance and bring our art inside these wonderful places. We are proud to be able to donate to our city two dance videos made by us.” Finally, Claudia Rota, artistic director of the School of Dance and Entertainment Nuovo Laboratorio and Teatro degli Angeli, notes that “the Dancin’Bo project has created a small revolution in the concept of dance. It has untied this word from that comfortable and much-loved zone called Theater. By taking it out of the classical stage, to place it directly in our city. In places that breathe art. Such as, for example, museums. Art within art. I think it is a breath of great freedom for dance. And especially now, but always, there is a need for Freedom.”

Bologna, coming up with eight video clips that bring dance to museum halls

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