Lugano Dance Project, born from an idea by Michel Gagnon and Carmelo Rifici who avail themselves of the curatorship of Lorenzo Conti, takes a further step forward by producing five works and marking the epilogue of an exceptional season which hosted great masters and ensembles of world fame, confirming the LAC's vocation for dance and contemporary languages.
The rich program of events which includes new productions, site-specific performances, workshops, meetings, screenings and Tanzfaktor, an evening that pays homage to emerging Swiss dance, will take place in the spaces of the LAC and in some of the most significant places of Ticino architecture such as the Villa Heleneum and the Ciani nursery school in Lugano, the San Materno Theater in Ascona and the Santa Maria degli Angeli Church on Monte Tamaro, designed by the architect Mario Botta.
Lugano Dance Project will present the production work of five established choreographers who have accepted the challenge of investigating the relationship between the human body and the architectural body: Cindy Van Acker, Belgian by birth and Swiss by adoption, the Canadian Rhodnie Désir, the Greek Christos Papadopoulos, the Italian Nicola Galli and the Greek Ioannis Mandafounis, who grew up artistically in Switzerland and is the new artistic director of the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company.
Tuesday 11 June at 21 pm, Lugano Dance Project opens at Palazzo dei Congressi with the preview of Tanzfactor, a two-year project by Reso-Rete Danza Svizzera designed to encourage the talent of young Swiss dancers and supported by the LAC. During the evening, five short choreographic pieces selected by a jury of experts will be hosted: a precious opportunity to present the productions to the general public by networking with sector operators from the various Swiss regions. Scheduled, Not Where, but Who by the choreographer and dancer Oriana Zeoli (aka Glory); Alea, in which Lena Schattenberg and Simea Cavelti pay poetic homage to water; Idiospect, where Tamara Mancini and Branca Scheidegger created an organic movement inspired by waacking, an urban dance style born in the gay community of Los Angeles in the Seventies; with ΑΕΝΑΟΣ the neo-Chaste choreographer and dancer Maxime Jeannerat stages repetition practices, pushing the body to the limits of its possibilities. The evening ends with Contrast, choreography by the urban dance collective Cie Nous et Moi made up of the Freiburgers Charlotte Cotting, Estelle Kaeser, Adrien Rako and Anaïs Kauer.
In addition to the productions and the preview of Tanzfaktor, Lugano Dance Project offers site-specific performances featuring Michele Di Stefano, Tiziana Arnaboldi, Maria Hassabi.
On Wednesday 12 June at 14 pm and Thursday 30 June at 13 pm and 14 pm, the former Diantus Watch watchmaker's shop in Castel San Pietro hosts MOBILE HOMES Album of the inhabitants of the New World, a project born as part of the collaboration between mk di Michele Di Stefano and LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura which connects complementary specialist skills on the theme of corporeity and living.
Michele Di Stefano's work at the former watch shop is enriched by an exhibition curated by the Atelier Blumer which tells, not only from an architectural point of view, its history and the consequent urban and productive development.
Thursday 13 June at 17 pm at the Ciani nursery school, the Tiziana Arnaboldi dancer and choreographer presents Autour du corps-Homage to the Bauhaus, a work that seeks a force for renewal through the exploration of new visions on the body and space of which Marta Ciappina and Eleonora Chiocchini are the protagonists. The idea was suggested to her by the observation of a photograph published in a Bauhaus magazine depicting a cone-shaped object, which becomes a costume in the show.
Saturday 15 June at 16pm in the LAC Hall, the artist and choreographer Maria Hassabi is the protagonist of White out, a solo she created on the occasion of I'll Be Your Mirror, a solo exhibition that the Tai Kwun Contemporary gallery in Hong Kong dedicated to her in 2023.
Saturday 15 June with Atmospherology–View>Lugano (18pm and 15pm in English, 19pm and 45pm in Italian), the audience follows the performance on headphones by looking out the window of Room 19 of the LAC. A project dedicated to cities and the perspective vision of the urban landscape; the view of the city is transformed by listening into a place that floats between the present and the possible.
The festival finally, it offers privileged moments of meeting and sharing with participants, with the aim of encouraging dialogue between artists, experts and scholars from different fields on the role of dance, art and culture in our time. And again, a rich program of screenings is planned which allow a reinterpretation of the choreographic creation thanks to the cinematographic language.
Five new productions for Lugano Dance Project
Thursday 13 June at 21pm
Theater Hall of the LAC
Debut of Quiet Light, a work in which Cindy Van Acker directs two performers in an empty space that reveals the theater in its essentiality. A piece inspired by the idea of the unfinished and the serene awareness that everything is in vain.
Friday 14 June at 21pm
Foce Theater
Landless is the new creation by Christos Papadopoulos and Georgios Kotstifakis who also stars in it. A solo in which the choreographer returns to the study of the body understood as an unknown territory, drawing inspiration from modern and postmodern architecture to build a new perspective on its basic functions.
Saturday 15 June at 10: 00
Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli at Monte Tamaro
Cosmorama, of which the choreographer Nicola Galli is the author and performer together with Giulio Petrucci, is a performance created specifically for the evocative chapel that the architect Mario Botta designed right on the edge of a slope from which you can enjoy an extraordinary panorama.
Saturday 15 June at 21: 00
Theater Hall of the LAC
European premiere of Symphonie de coeurs, created by the Canadian choreographer-documentarian Rhodnie Désir who will transform the LAC stage into a large beating heart full of humanity, making use of the original music of the singer and cellist Jorane, performed by the Orchestra della Svizzera italiana conducted by Naomi Woo.
Sunday 16 June at 11am
San Materno Theater in Ascona
Released by Ioannis Mandafounis, is the performance that the artist created taking inspiration from the extraordinary architecture of the theatre. The public is invited to move around the places of San Materno following a path that develops between internal, quiet and quiet spaces, and external ones, which reflect the sounds of the city.
