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Andrea Zardi – GRNDR_date no one

November 29th, 2024 Bari International Gender festival, Bari
Duration: unknown

The World of Dating Apps

© Andrea Macchia

Welcome to an underground digital grid: the world of dating apps. A figure—a speed model—jumps from one profile to another, from one body to another, canceling the distance but continuously looking for a way out. Loneliness, sexual drive, alienation, or simple interaction: which instinct pushes you to choose the closest profile? 

GRNDR_Date no one investigates the dating app phenomenon. Apart from being addictive, the use of sex-dating apps affects our way of perceiving the other, their body and their presence, consequences that intertwine with the new human and social relation dynamics. The work is characterized by poses and mutations, in which the body changes, showing the most desirable piece. 

Through the screen, the subject is exposed and vulnerable: an anonymous figure shows the best parts of themselves. The identity is irrelevant when the body details are more important, and all that can be demanded is to reach an instant pleasure when all that one might want to sweeten the sense of loneliness is just a few steps away. 

Andrea Zardi is an Italian dancer, choreographer and researcher. He trained at Hamlyn Ballet School, Nuova Officina della Danza, Tanzfabrik, Eko Dance Project and National Dance Foundation and worked for national companies and theatres. He obtained a PhD in Performing Arts Disciplines at the University of Turin. In 2018, he founded the ZA DanceWorks company, with whom he deals with artistic planning and curatorship in Italy and Europe. Currently, he is a research associate at the University of Turin.

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Sylvain Huc – Sujets

November 22nd, 2024 Cofestival 2024, Ljubljana
60 minutes

A Spellbinding Continuum

© Erik Damiano

Confronted with the rawness of their nature and the uncertainty of their condition, human specimens explore the space they inhabit and the desire that moves them. However abstract, the drawings borne out by their bodies attest to a tangible commitment by these individuals.

They experiment with movements, test their energies, feel themselves being pushed towards each other or into the void, which threatens to push back its limits… Drifting through the space, they suddenly regain their self-confidence to form a new community.

Through the use of nudity, Sylvain Huc explores the issue of writing, achieving the right balance between the organic nature of the choreography and the natural life of the bodies. The acute, supple movement of the performers, the subtlety of the lighting and the obsessive sound all combine to form a spellbinding continuum.

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Akram Khan – GIGENIS

November 20th – 24th, 2024 Sadler’s Wells, London
January 11th – 14th, 2025 Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris
February 12th – 16th, 2025 The Joyce Theatre, New York
April 10th, 2025 UCSB Arts & Lectures, Santa Barbara
April 17th – 19th, 2025 The Kennedy Center, Washington
60 minutes

Akram Khan
Returns to His roots

© Maxime Dos

So that was where he came from, and the story puts in place several elements that went on to recur throughout Khan’s career: classical kathak, contemporary dance, commercial dance, famous figures, international touring, a strong technique and a compelling stage presence. Yet to “come from” somewhere is about more than personal biography: it’s also about cultural milieu.

Sanjoy Roy

A choreographer and dancer rooted in the tradition of his practice, and a creative interpreter of stories that need to be ‘felt’ – Akram has revolutionised the world of dance. His deeply moving style is simultaneously poetic, innovative and experiential underpinned by intelligently crafted narrative structures. With his bilingual mastery of Kathak and contemporary dance, he has developed a uniquely individual voice as a protagonist of cross-cultural encounters. It is this very encounter, that provokes a personal need for this new creation: a unique work featuring an ensemble of seven renowned artists of Indian Classical Dance (including Akram himself) and seven live Indian Classical musicians.

Drawing from his deep-seated connection to traditional practices and his ability to weave narratives through movement, Akram’s GIGENIS transcends time, invoking the collective memories of our civilisation. It is not just a performance but a profound statement — a testament to the enduring resonance of tradition in a rapidly changing world.

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Maria Clara Villa Lobos – Pedros

November 20th – 23rd, 2024 Théâtre de Liège, Liège
50 minutes

When a Father and His Son Are both Dancers

© Davide Zazzera

Their names are Francis and Antoine Pedros. They are father and son, and both professional dancers. Francis was soloist in the Ballet Royal de Wallonie, which later became Charleroi Danse, Antoine is a dancer and choreographer for his own company.

With this duet, Maria Clara explores the father-son relationship through the language of dance which they have in common, but also through words, memories and anecdotes…

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Harald Beharie – Batty Bwoy

  • November 16th – 17th, 2024 Bari International Gender festival, Bari
  • November 21st – 23rd, 2024 Sophiensæle, Berlin
  • December 6th – 7th, 2024 Kampnagel, Hamburg
  • March 22nd, 2025 Artdanthé, Vanves
  • March 24th, 2025 Festival Le Grand Bain, Roubaix
  • March 27th, 2025 STUK, Leuven
  • April 1st – 3rd, 2025 Bora Bora, Aarhus
  • April 8th – 9th, 2025 Dansehallerne, Copenhagen
  • May 20th – 22nd, 2025 Tramway/Buzzcut Glasgow
  • May 28th – 31st, 2025 FTA, Montreal
  • June 7th, 2025 RCI93, Aubervilliers

75 minutes

A Captivating Solo

© Tale Hendnes

There are hints of dancehall dutty wine whirls, or sexy pelvis swaying. The movements are always ambivalent: they range between vulnerable, violent and ecstatic, yet become mechanical and ‘empty’ through numerous repetitions.

Jelena Mihelčić

Batty Bwoy is a solo performance in collaboration with Karoline Bakken Lund, Veronica Bruce, Jassem Hindi and Ring van Mobius.

Through a reappropriation of the Jamaican term “ Batty Bwoy” (litteraly, butt boy), slang for a queer person, the work twists and turns myths to invoke demonic sensitivities and charming cruelties, unfolding vulnerable possibilities in an interplay of consciousness and naivety. The horror and joy of Batty Bwoy, inherent to queer blackness, is unmasked. 

Scrutinizing the absurdity of a queer monstrosity, Batty Bwoy articulates the porosity of bodies and languages, their mouths swallowing and regurgitating the corporal fictions projected onto their skins.  

Batty Bwoy attacks and embraces sedimented narratives around the fear of the queer body as a perverse and deviant figure. The expression “Batty Bwoy” is used to evoke an ambivalent being that exists in the threshold of the precarious body, liberated power, joy and batty energy!

The work has found inspiration in mythologies, disgusting stereotypes, feelings and fantasies of the queer body and identities, homophobic dancehall lyrics, 70s Giallo films from Italy, resilient “gully queens” and queer voices in Norway and Jamaica that have visited and taken part of the process.

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Chunky Move – 4/4

November 15th – 16th, 2024 Les Halles de Schaerbeek, Brussels
November 22nd – 24th, 2024 Dansens Hus, Olso
December 3rd, 2024 PLT Theater, Heerlen
December 6th – 7th, 2024 Teatro Municipal do Porto, Porto
December 10th – 11th, 2024 Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Luxembourg
60 minutes

A Uniquely Australian Performance

© Gianna Rizzo

4/4 is Chunky Move’s blueprint for choreographic precision, physical endurance, minimalist design and rugged street aesthetics.

Eight dancers perform a stark symphony of mesmerising movement against the backdrop of minimalist design. As episode after episode builds upon the last, quartets and duets converge and diverge in ever more hypnotic configurations.

Described by audiences as meticulous, mesmerising and exhilarating, and collecting 5- and 4-star reviews and a Green Room award and nomination, 4/4 is a stunning and unrelenting display of Chunky Move Artistic Director Antony Hamilton’s distinctive choreographic language and methodology.

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Farooq Chaudhry – Ten Thousand Tons of Moonlight

November 15th – 17th, 2024 Young Theatre, Shanghai
Duration: unknown

When Poetry Meets Dance

© Oliver Hoo

Ten Thousand Tons of Moonlight is a compelling dance-theatre production that draws inspiration from the thought-provoking poems of Yu Xiuhua, a female celebrated contemporary Chinese poet. The production brings to life Yu Xiuhua’s reflections and questions on love, beauty, disability, and the societal expectations placed on women.

Conceived and directed by Farooq Chaudhry, Ten Thousand Tons of Moonlight, merges the languages of poetry, dance and visual design to explore the dualities and contradictions that inhabit Yu Xiuhua and all of us. The performance raises questions about the role of personal struggles in finding our authenticity. It asks whether stepping out of the shadows and embracing our true selves is the key to finding liberation, or if these shadows hold a deeper meaning? Could these poems, serve as a doorway to an alternate reality where our essence can flourish and our souls can find freedom?

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Javier Martín – Figuras del Umbral

November 14th – 15th, 2024 Mercat de les Flors, Barcelona
70 minutes

Science, Philosophy and Choreography

© Leo López

A piece that invites us to reflect and review the speed of our era, installed in our bodies and fragmenting our attention. Javier Martín invokes the concept of ancestral rituals of “crossing the threshold”, involving the body in a social dance. In the words of the artist: “The famous ‘Guardian of the Threshold’ archetype refers to those figures that take on the forms of our most intimate fears: they guard the threshold, not to deny us entry, but to encourage us to explore the propitious labyrinth that facilitates transformation and, therefore, passage.”

Javier Martín, a choreographer with a scientific background and passion for philosophy, is developing an epistemological and critical research project about the art of movement. He takes a transdisciplinary approach to choreographic creation and dance, drawing on writing, performative conferences, research groups and creative laboratory and tool development. Since starting out in 2005, he has created and showcased more than 30 productions in Spain, France, Russia, Portugal, Ukraine, Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala and Uruguay, with fifteen stage shows and an equal number of site-specific projects and special collaborations.

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Alexander Vantournhout – every_body

November 12th, 2024 CC sint niklaas, Sint Niklaas
November 14th, 2024 Theater Malpertuis, Tielt
November 21st – 23rd, 2024 Les Brigittines, Brussels
November 28th – 29th, 2024 La Soufflerie, Rezé
January 24th – 25th, 2025 3 bis f, Aix-en-Provence
Feburary 8th, 2025 cultuurcentrum Hasselt, Hasselt
Feburary 12th, 2025 CC Het Gasthuis, Aarschot
Feburary 13th, 2025 Belgica Theater, Dendermonde
Feburary 19th – 22th, 2025 kunstencentrum Nona, Mechelen
Feburary 25th – 26th, 2025 Festival DañsFabrik, Brest
60 minutes

From Ordinary to Extraordinary

© Bart Grietens

In every_body, choreographer Alexander Vantournhout, alongside collaborator Emmi Väisänen, delves into everyday movements. They elevate simple actions like handshakes and walking into a complex canvas of bodily dynamics. The duo crafts a tapestry of choreography, turning even the subtlest of movements into something remarkable.

The performance is further enriched by the sonic landscape created by composer and guitarist Geoffrey Burton. Fashion designer and scenographer Tom Van der Borght designs both the costumes and the surreal setting where every_body takes place.

Over the last decade, Alexander Vantournhout has built a diverse oeuvre, from ensemble pieces to solos. Every_body (2024) is his fourth duet, following projects like Through the Grapevine (2020). The new creation marks his next step to dissect and reinterpret everyday movements, redefining the limits of human physical expression.

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Marco da Silva Ferreira – C A R C A Ç A

November 8th – 10th, 2024 National Performing Arts Center, Taipei
November 15th – 16th, 2024 Rohm Theatre Kyoto, Kyoto
November 20th, 2024 The Museum of Art Kochi, Kochi
December 10th, 2024 Theater im Pfalzbau, Ludwigshafen
December 18th – 19th, 2024 Auditorio de Tenerife, Santa Cruz de Tenerife
January 25th, 2025 Teatro Municipal da Covilhã, Covilhã
February 1st – 2nd, 2025 Sadler’s Well, London
February 7th – 9th, 2025 Perth Festival, Perth
February 26th – 27th, 2025 Le Quartz, Brest
March 4th, 2025 Les Quinconces et L’Espal, Le Mans
March 6th – 7th, 2025 CCN de Caen, Caen
March 10th – 11th, 2025 Théâtre de Cornouaille, Quimper
March 14th, 2025 Cndc Angers, Angers
March 28th – 29th, 2025 Tanzmainz Festival, Mainz
April 2nd – 4th, 2025 La Comédie de Clermont, Clermont-Ferrand
April 8th, 2025 Théâtre de Nîmes, Nîmes
April 15th, 2025 Espaces Pluriels, Pau
April 30th – May 3rd, 2025 Danse Danse, Montreal
May 16th, 2025 Theatro Circo, Braga
July 8th – 9th, 2025 Colours International Dance Festival, Stuttgart
75 minutes

A rising Portuguese Choreographer to Follow

© Jose Caldeira

Collective identities are sources of belonging and inclusion but when they become mainstream, they can turn the other way around. I can recognise this issue in dance.

Marco da Silva Ferreira Interviewed by Springback Magazine

In CARCAÇA,  ten dancers including Marco da Silva Ferreira and two musicians form an unconventional and joyful corps de ballet. The dancers perform intricate footwork merging folk dances with contemporary urban dance styles from groups such as LGBTQIA+ and communities from ex-colonies. In this choreography, Marco da Silva Ferreira uses dance to investigate communities, the construction of collective identity, memory and cultural crystallization. In other words: what if folk dances had not crystallized, had continued to redefine themselves and had incorporated the present at every moment?

The cast explores their collective identity in a physical, intuitive and unpretentious flow of the body, dance and cultural construction. They start from familiar footwork: clubbing, balls, cypher battles and the studio; they use the physical vocabulary of the contemporary, social, urban context as a lexicon of identity (house, kuduro, Top Rock, hardStyle, etc.). Through a slow construction process they connect these styles with the heritage and memory of dances from the past. These folk dances have remained stagnant without integrating new definitions of bodies, groups and communities, which were considered inferior. For these groups it was necessary to break with the authoritarian, totalitarian and paternalistic past.

In CARCAÇA  an exercise is proposed that integrates the past and the present. The performance makes you think: How do you decide what to forget and what to remember? What is the role of individual identities in the construction of a community? What is the driving force of an identity? What world does the individual and collective body traverse? Or, better put, what bodies traverse the world?

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