B.Motion Festival Bassana del Grappe
If we talk about specifics of the theatre for further on, our next stop is Bassano del Grappa, Italy – the Veneto Operaestate Festival, B.Motion section. To complete my discussion about site-specific theatre, this is a festival that brings dance outside to the open. There is no single definition of what constitutes the general consensus that implies places that create the picture about site-specific theatre, nowadays due to the spread of coronavirus. The idea whispers through towns and green Italian countryside, leaving a certain grip of emotion behind. What the unconventional theatre space or a site-specific performance is like right now? What is space like in a traditional theatre venue if we are not allowed to get close to each other?
Through the years of viewing theatre, I came across the creation and study of performance outside original approaches to the traditional theatre spaces, slightly suggesting organizing innovative strategies, methods, and practice for putting theatre/including contemporary dance in a variety of contexts and locations. There are a few case studies and projects/festivals today in Europe that develop distinctive theoretical insights into the relationship of site and performance and scenography. We all know about Edinburgh Fringe for example. With this text I would like to bring up practical initiatives in the conception relating to staging of performances. What are the effective models for its critical appreciation really? What is the invitation for further site-specific practice and what is it really like now, in this coronavirus situation? Without any rigid definition, what is an “immersive” model in order to imagine ourselves into a specific site staging? Could we now with the relationship between performance and environment refer to a defined geographical area? What will the approaching a piece of work or a dance performance be like? Will it become just a topographic phenomenon of natural and local history?
B.Motion Punk
In the year 2020 coronavirus hits Italy pretty badly, and if all the flights to Italy are canceled, and if the public events are canceled, this is the future when it comes to theatre outside of the traditional theatre space for all of us. There is a future in it, in order to convey serious health issues and keeping distance rules. This is a physical distance only we are talking about. The site-specific theatre is commonly more interactive than conventional theatre and, with the expectation of the audience predominantly moving about more than just sitting, which adds to the summary of keeping distance due to coronavirus prevention. This theatre frequently takes place in structures originally built for non-theatrical reasons or performance-based functioning places easily adopted somewhere outside where the distance is easy to make. Even if the definitions of site-specific theatre are complicated, considering that both theatre studies and visual art are referred to as site-specific performance, the performance created in this relation is to a physical site and staging at a certain site.
B.Motion Festival Bassana del Grappe
Source: Operaestate Festival, Italy
Dance from All Around the Globe
For instance, Italian Veneto province Bassano del Grappa in the year 2019, just before coronavirus devastated Italy, hosted at the Operaestate B.Motion dance festival 29 artists for 25 different performances. Many of the B.Motion productions and presentations, curated by Roberto Casarotto were located outside at the site-specific locations. The festival focuses on the main town, Bassano del Grappa, and usually brings international artists and dance professionals together to present performances, organizes the classes and meetings, create the valid professional networking, etc. In the year 2019, there was a special project commissioned by the festival to some of the artists invited such as the Italian Daniele Ninarello, the author of the creation for the Dance Well dancers, the dance for Parkinson community. How important is open space for Parkinson’s community dancers? Then Museum of Human E-Motions: five artists from three different countries, which in the year 2019 involved Clara Furey and Mélanie Demers from Canada, Margrét Bjarnadottir from Iceland, James Batchelor and S J Norman from Australia. The created pieces were inspired by specific human emotion and a traditional object from each of the native culture, performed in the Medieval Graces’ Tower, which is again a non-traditional space. Every year, the festival presents titles selected by the European Network Aerowaves such as in 2019 where Rianto’s Medium and Harleking by Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi, Commedia dell’Arte’s Harlequin mixed with the image of a grotesque monster like a demon. Or Italian Francesca Foscarini’s Animale, a creation for the dancer Romain Guion inspired by Ligabue’s paintings, Silvia Gribaudi’s Graces inspired by Canova’s sculptures. Alessandro Sciarroni, Golden Lion at Venice Biennale 2019, presented Save the last dance for me, an attempt to save a very specific kind of Polka dance; Carlotta Sagna created an extraordinary solo en pointe for the dancer Amancio Gonzales called Blue Prince Black Sheep all taken outside of traditional theatre spaces. B.motion every year includes a Summer School dedicated to dancers of different ages and experience as a Choreographic Research Project and the Dance Well Teaching Course, for dance professionals who’d like to learn the Dance Well practice. Also, not to forget the London Dance Umbrella that presents, promotes, and supports international contemporary dance in support of diverse artists and aesthetical diversity in contemporary dance.
In the spirit of all that, in spite of the coronavirus, Bassana’s B.Motion organized in May 2020 an open call for Dance Well dancers to participate in a new creative process of Sara Sguotti. The proposal is to develop workshops at home, for the construction of choreographic material, through a creative process conducted by Sara Sguotti. This path develops in 2020 and 2021, and the product will be open to the public during the next B motion. http://www.operaestate.it/centro-per-la-scena-contemporanea/call-per-dance-well-dancers/?fbclid=IwAR2v3q0Ccc1pT7kLk-Fzvwk688sn-aQgE38E_cu1W66_I8JPtrB8mZnyKkM