Italy/NY: A Dancing Duet - Roundtable and networking by ECS 2018 →

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Emerging Choreographer Series (ECS), the project born in New York in 2013 from the collaboration between the City University of New York - La Guardia Performing Arts Center and the company "Mare Nostrum Elements" directed by Nicola Iervasi, will culminate in two fully produced performances at the La Guardia Performing Arts Center on February 26th and 27th 2018 featuring the works developed during the program.

Born as a mentoring program dedicated to emerging choreographers, the project has developed into a residency capable of providing concrete support, technical means and management guidance for the production of a new creation by the young selected choreographers who can benefit from all the technical, logistic and artistic support that the program is able to provide. This is an important and rare opportunity for young choreographers.

In 2016, ECS established a collaboration with the Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Rome, which strengthened the international nature of the project and ensured a focus on the relationship with young Italian choreographers. For the current edition Nicoletta Serio was selected in Rome last spring. Caterina Rago, an Italian professional choreographer residing in New York City where she directs the "Caterina Rago Dance Company" will work as mentor for Nicoletta Serio during her residency.

This roundtable is organized by Valeria Orani (Artistic Director ofUmanism NY), and under the auspices of the Italian Cultural Institute of NYC in partnership with Mare Nostrum Elements. It will be an occasion to discuss the projects and fostering connections between New York and Italian art scenes, already growing in-part to the collaboration between Mare Nostrum Elements and Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Rome.

Mare Nostrum Element's directors will present thir international partnership with Italy and officially launch the 5th edition of the Emerging Choreographers Series, which will culminate in a performance featuring new dance works by its choreographers on February 26th and 27th.

The nine choreographers selected by Mare Nostrum Elements for 2018 Emerging Choreographers Series are: Nicoletta Serio, Hannah Button, Christopher Núñez, Ann Dragich, Dougie Robbins, Garrett Parker, Zoe Walders, Quilan Arnold, and Patrick O'Brien. They will have opportunity to share their experience with attendees, dance professionals and journalists and others.

Download ECS 2018 press release in English

Download ECS 2018 press release in Italian

"Hokusai Life coloured" exhibition by Claudia Piscitelli

Claudia Piscitelli lives and works in Italy, mostly in Naples, Rome and Todi.

She studied drawing and painting at the New York Studio School, the International Academy of Art (RUFA) in Rome, the International Summer School, Saltzburg and the Slade University, London.  Formerly a biologist, she also holds a PhD in Genetics and specializes in Microbiology from University Federico II in Naples.

Her work has been exhibited in Naples, Rome, throughout Umbria and London. Her exhibition “Soul Portraits” (20 drawings on paper from herlarger “Soul Portraits project”) is currently shown at Pièce Unique Variations in Paris. 

Claudia Piscitelli follows an enigmatic and intricate innermost path and rather than simply painting, she challenges the limits and crafty pushes the boundaries of traditional technique until she finds her artistic tools with which she can take off to on a very personal journey. By doing so, she creates work with eyes and ideas which mirror her vast emotional nature.  Her exhibition is a tribute to the magnificent art of Japan-born Hokusai.

Claudia Piscitelli studies Hokusai introspectively, her goal is to observe in depth and detect his painstaking research until her artistic dimension becomes infused with his art. CP further elaborates her own conceptual world made of colors, traits, all of which is the result of her own interpretation of Hokusai.

Her analysis is wholesome and uncorrupted, eager to establish a contact with Hokusai and contextualize forms, colours, fullness and void, lightness and density.  Her tribute to Hokusai becomes an introspective journey resulting in 12diptychs on display at the New York Studio School - Student Gallery and Lobby at 8 W8th street, New York, NY 10011, from September 21 to October 4 2017.

The artist will be present at the opening and press preview on September 21, at 6-8 pm 

For any further information please get in touch with Valeria Orani at (516)-849-8404 or email info@umanism.com .

RSVP HERE

Italian and American Playwrights Project in Italy

Our Artistic Director Valeria Orani and the journalist Graziano Graziani will have the pleasure to introduce you to the first edition of Italian and American Playwrights Project next Jul. 25th at 12.00 @Teatro Vascello - Roma

book your partecipation on this page

read more about Italian and American Playwrights Project

Alessandra Corona Performing Works presents New dances by Italian choreographers

ALESSANDRA CORONA Performing Works

presents

Photo Credit: Alessandra Corona, James Johnson - ©Natalia Bougadellis

Amore Impossibile choreographed by Kristian Cellini  
Just Joy choreographed by Guido Tuveri

with
Alessandra Corona
James Johnson, Maria Vittoria Villa, Dannon O'Brien,
Nicholas Montero, Michael Bishop, Cassandra Orefice
Narrator: Fulvio Della Volta
Original Music: Thomas Lentakis

May 30 & 31, 8pm General Admission: $31 (Students and Dancers $ 20 at the door)
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE TICKETS
 

Alessandra Corona founded "A Corona Works" in New York City with a commitment to develop original artistic works that integrate dance, music, theater, video and film arts, for presentation in the United States and around the world. Her passion is to create art collaborating with professional artists from different performing art disciplines. Alessandra Corona has assembled remarkable and unique artists. 

Amore Impossibile is a new dance-theater production choreographed by the innovative Italian choreographer Kristian Cellini. The inspiration and atmosphere comes from the romance ‘ The Lady of the Camellias’, revised in a contemporary version.
Cellini’s work highlight the sentimental and passionate aspects of the eternal love between the main characters, with the help of a narrator and the original music by Thomas Lentakis. The expressive peak in the choreography will be emphasized by the music of Frederic Chopin.

Just Joy, choreographed by Guido Tuveri, is a collaboration with the artists celebrating the stages of life. It aims to show how even in times of difficulties and sorrow, dance will always bring passion and joy. The original music is by the American composer Thomas Lentakis.
to learn more about the show and "A Corona Works" please visit www.acoronaworks.com
 

"La Stoffa dei Sogni" directed by Gianfranco Cabiddu at La Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò

Casa Italian Zerilli - Marimò - May 2, 2017 - 6.00pm

This screening is part of Primi al Cinema, a new Casa Italiana series dedicated to debut films, American and New York premieres and other cinematographic novelties from and about Italy.

La stoffa dei sogni
(Italy, 2016, 101 min.)
In ITALIAN with ENGLISH subtitles

Directed by Gianfranco Cabiddu
Written by Gianfranco Cabiddu, Ugo Chiti, Salvatore De Mola

Starring Sergio Rubini, Ennio Fantastichini, Teresa Saponangelo

Loosely adapted from Eduardo De Filippo's Arte della commedia and translation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Members of the Camorra on the run and actors seeking for authority meet after a shipwreck on an island-prison. The theatre turns into a free zone where everyone may not be able to recover their social role but for sure their humanity. Somebody can even get love back. Shakespeare and Eduardo De Filippo blend together in a picaresque comedy full of coup de théâtre.

Followed by a Q&A with director Gianfranco Cabiddu, moderated by Valeria Orani (Umanism NY)

Remembering Dario Fo with Robert Brustein

Monday, April 24
Segal Theatre
6:30pm Conversation + 2:00pm Screenings

FREE + Open to public. First come, first served.
Join us for a day celebrating the legacy of Dario Fo with Robert Brustein, the legendary founder of the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theater (A.R.T) and Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Afternoon screenings curated by Rossella Menna.

Additional support from Rossella Menna (Dramaturg, performing arts curator), and Mariateresa Pizza (Director, Franca Rame Dario Fo Archive/Rome); the Italian Playwrights Project, Valeria Orani and The Italian Cultural Institute, Giorgio Van Straten.

The Segal Center honored Franca Rame in 2013 after her passing.

Same Day Afternoon screenings:

2:00pm Mistero Buffo Part 1 (Palazzina Liberty, 1977)
– subtitled English 60 min excerpt
3:00pm Morte accidentale di un anarchico (Teatro Cristallo, Milano 1987) – subtitled English 60 min excerpt
4:00pm The Theatre of Dario Fo (documentary, 1984) – in English 50 min
5:00pm Dario Fo and Franca Rame: A Nobel for Two (documentary, 1998) in English 55 min Directed by Lorena Luciano & Filippo Piscopo

Awarded the coveted National Medal for the Arts in 2011 by President Obama, Robert Brustein—a veteran of World War II—has been a playwright, critic, teacher, actor, director, and founder of
two major repertory theatre companies, the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard. Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Suffolk University, he is a former Professor of English at Harvard University (now Senior Research Fellow), and New Republic Theatre Critic for over forty years. He now writes regularly for the Huffington Post, and teaches Dramaturgy students at the Drama School. He was Dean of the Yale School of Drama for thirteen years, where he also founded Yale Theatre magazine and the Yale Cabaret. He served for 20 years as Director of the Loeb Drama Center where he founded the ART Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard.

Dario Fo (24 March 1926 – 13 October 2016) was an Italian actor-playwright, comedian, singer, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, painter, political campaigner for the Italian left-wing and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. Fo’s plays, in a hybrid Brechtian tradition, have been translated into 30 languages, and he was considered the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre. Much of Fo’s dramatic work, co-created with his partner Franca Rame (18 July 1929 – 29 May 2013), depends on improvisation and comprises the recovery of “illegitimate” forms of theatre, such as those performed by giullari (medieval strolling players) and, more famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell’arte.
His plays have been translated into 30 languages and performed across the world, including in Argentina, Chile, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, the UK[6] and Yugoslavia. His work of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s is peppered with criticisms of assassinations, corruption, organised crime, racism, Roman Catholic theology and war. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, he took to lampooning Forza Italia and its leader Silvio Berlusconi, while his targets of the 2010s included the banks amid the European sovereign-debt crisis.
Fo’s solo pièce célèbre, titled Mistero Buffo and performed across Europe, Canada and Latin America over a 30-year period, is recognised as one of the most controversial and popular spectacles in postwar European theatre. The play has been denounced by by Cardinal Ugo Poletti from the Vatican as “the most blasphemous show in the history of television”. Fo considered himseld an atheist. The 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature marked the “international acknowledgment of Fo as a major figure in twentieth-century world theatre”. The Swedish Academy praised Fo as a writer “who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden”. Dario Fo owned and operated his own theatre company.

MoveOpolis! XXYY & MARTHA@20 - NYLA March 8-11

MAR 8-11 AT 7:30PM

New York Live Arts Theater (219 W 19th Street, New York, NY 10011)

TICKETS START AT $15/$25 BOOK NOW

Richard Move/MoveOpolis! opens New York Live Arts Live Ideas 2017 with the world premiere of XXYY and Martha@20, a special performance celebrating the 20th anniversary of Martha@…

XXYY is a poetic and otherworldly dance-theater event exploring the multiplicities of the gender spectrum while deconstructing the conventional binaries of male and female. It combines Move’s highly stylized choreography and Alba Clemente’s inventive and elaborate costuming to create a provocative, alternative vision of the world. XXYY incorporates text from the obscure Autobiography of an Androgyne, written at the turn of the 20th century by Ralph Werther. The original sound score by Martux_m includes the Vatican’s Last Castrato, Alessandro Moreschi (1858–1922), the only castrato to make solo recordings. XXYY is performed by Move and longtime collaborators Catherine Cabeen and Katherine Crockett. Lighting design is by Donalee Katz.

The program also features Martha@20, an anniversary celebration of Move’s continuously evolving performance as legendary 20th-century icon Martha Graham. Having received a Bessie Award and accolades worldwide for their highly researched and nuanced portrayal of Graham, Move will present a special performance of Martha@… with monologues that illuminate Graham’s unparalleled career and restagings of Graham dances. Katherine Crockett, a former principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, and Catherine Cabeen, a former member of the Graham Company, will again join Move in this performance.

Produced in Association with Patricia Field Art/Fashion and Slobodan Randjelović

Milano, Via Padova" the last movie work of Rezzamastrella on March 2nd at the third annual Segal Center Film Festival on Theatre and Performance

The Martin Segal Theatre Center
365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016
Thursday 2 | On Loop All Day | Segal Lobby

Italy | 2016 | 70 minutes | directed by Flavia Mastrella & Antonio Rezza
Italian with English subtitles
www.rezzamastrella.com

The film tells of racism and intolerance through song that shows the sweetness of a forgotten rhythm. The unusual reality performative reaches peaks when the personal and social problems are intertwined.

FLAVIA MASTRELLA & ANTONIO REZZA deal with communicative arts, Their film Escoriandoli was presented at Venice Film Festival in 1996 and Il Passato è il mio Bastone in 2008. In 2006, their short film Il Piantone was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Shangay. In the same year they made installations and performances at Bologna's GAM Gallery. They have won the Hysteria Prize, the Ubu Prize, and the Napoli Prize. In 2014, published by Il Saggiatore book "Clamori al vento". In 2016 they presented Pitecus at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York.

Rolling NYC photo exhibition by Gino Ale at Piccolo Cafè opening March 1st

Piccolo Cafè is not just a place where daily-prepared Italian food is served , but also a place where worldwide artists and talents meet together to catch up, follow up on a project, network and find support to market their work in NY. An opportunity which Umanism could not possibly miss!
Thirty-three-year-old Venezuelan artist Gino Alejandro will launch his first exhibition at Piccolo Cafè located at 274W 40th street in Manhattan on March 1st
Here you will be able to catch the spirit of the city, get to know us and meet our friends. You will also catch a glimpse of how il feels like to live in NY - all through a black and white footage filtered by the eyes of a young photographer . Alejandro's work shows his meticulous  study of light, and his passion about buildings and people, faces and souls, randomly caught during the day. His journey  is a black and white journey made at a different time of the day.  A day walking in NY with Gino and his camera, lens and his love for details is like going back and forth and being able to observe past and present of the City with a contemporary eye , where the future has become our present and is intertwined with our past and with those who settled here before us . Here the City is Itself the main feature hence the choice of black and white .

Gino Alejandro is a current student AT the New York Institute of Photography. He moved to NY to accomplish HIS dream, identify the magic of NY - capital of the world, under a different perspective. He also contributes to @rollingthecities  instagram project with two other photographers that capture the essence of Barcelona, Spain and Buenos Aires in Argentina.

instagram @ginoalejandro @piccolocafenyc

A Corona Works presents Impossible Love choreographed by Kristian Cellini and Just Joy choreographed by Guido Tuveri

Impossible Love / Just Joy
A Corona Works
Thu February 16 – Sat February 18, 2016 -  8:00 pm

Gibney Dance

Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center

280 Broadway (Entrance at 53 A Chambers Street) New York

book your ticket here!
 

                                                                                                    Alessandra Corona (©Giorgio Russo)

A Corona Works will be presenting "IMPOSSIBLE LOVE" choreographed by Kristian Cellini and “JUST JOY” choreographed by Guido Tuveri,  the preview of the two original works starting at Gibney Dance Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center in New York prior to opening next June at the Baruck Theatre in New York

Alessandra Corona started A Corona Works in New York City to create and develop new multi-disciplinary projects. Corona’s goal is to make artistic works that integrate dance, music, theater, video and film arts, for presentation in the United States and around the world. Her passion is to create art collaborating with high-level professional artists from different performing art disciplines. 

Impossible Love is a new dance-theater production choreographed by the innovative Italian choreographer Kristian Cellini. The inspiration and atmosphere comes from the romance ‘ The Lady of the Camellias’, revised in a contemporary version.

Cellini’s work highlight the sentimental and passionate aspects of the eternal love between the main characters, with the help of a narrator and the original music by Thomas Lentakis. The expressive peak in the choreography will be emphasized by the music of Frederic Chopin.

Just Joy, choreographed by Guido Tuveri, is a collaboration with the artists celebrating the stages of life. It aims to show how even in times of difficulties and sorrow, dance will always bring passion and joy. The original music is by the American composer Thomas Lentakis.

Please join us at Gibney Center. 

A Corona Works presents

Impossible Love by Kristian Cellini / Just Joy by Guido Tuveri

Performers:

Alessandra Corona, James Johnson, Maria Vittoria Villa, Dannon O'Brien,

Nicholas Montero, Cassandra Orefice

Narrator: Fulvio Della Volta

Original Music: Thomas Lentakis

Production manager: Valeria Orani

Download the full cast bio

Download the press-kit (full cast bio + pictures)

Italian Playwrights Project - Stefano Massini - Dec 5, 2016

Monday, December 5
Segal Theatre
6:30pm Artist talk 

FREE + Open to public. First come, first served.

On December 5, 2016 The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (The Graduate Center, CUNY) will host an Artist Talk with Italian playwright Stefano Massini about his work, the role of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, and contemporary theatre in Europe. FREE & Open to public.

The Italian Playwrights Project presents Something about the Lehmans, a conversation with playwright Stefano Massini about his work as well as the role of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano and contemporary theatre in Europe. At the artist talk, moderated by Dr. Frank Hentschker (The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Executive Director and Director of Programs), Massini will be joined by Valeria Orani (Umanism founder and director), and Giorgio Van Straten (Director of the Italian Cultural Institute of New York). The event will also feature a reading of an excerpt from Something about the Lehmans, translated by Allison Eikerenkoetter, directed by Marco Calvani, and performed by actor Robert Funaro.

omething About The Lehmans (Mondadori 2016) by Italian playwright Stefano Massini tells the story of the historic rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers investment house. The play premiered at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano-Teatro d’Europa in 2015 and was the last work of legendary Italian theatre director Luca Ronconi. It has since been produced widely in Europe. Oscar Award-winning director Sam Mendes will be staging The Lehman Trilogy.

After the event at The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, the audience is invited to meet the artists and curators of the Italian Playwrights Projects at the Umanism Fundraising After Party to support the Italian Playwrights Project activities. The After Party will take place at The Archive Bar (12E 36th St. New York). Suggested minimum donation of $50 includes VIP Pass with food and drink.

The Italian Playwrights Project was created by Valeria Orani (Umanism NY) and Frank Hentschker (The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center), in collaboration with The Italian Cultural Institute in New York, Giorgio Van Straten, Director. This event is made possible by the generous support of Joseph LoCicero/ The Segal Company.

Info: www.thesegalcenter.org/event/italian-playwrights-project-something-about-the-lehmansitaly-with-stefano-massini

UMANISM Fundraising After Party

From 8:30pm at The Archive Bar (12 E.36th St. New York)

LIMITED ADMISSION

Suggested minimum Donation: $50 (includes VIP Pass with food and drink)

Info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/italian-playwright-project-stefano-massini-fundraising-after-party-tickets-29061501734

Italian Playwrights Project 2017 Fundraising Campaign

The Italian Playwrights Project supports workshops with Italian playwrights in New York City with American actors, dramaturgs and translators. It also produces public presentations and readings of the plays in English as well as some excerpts in Italian. The initiative also produces the publication of a translated anthology of the selected Italian plays. This initiative is year-round with the mission to support the development of up to four playwrights' work over the course of a year.
Donate now to support this project and promote Italian Culture!

Thanks to our fiscal sponsorship Fractured Atlas your donations are Tax deductible 

RezzaMastrella, the unclassified theater land in New York - Oct 13 16, 2016

Antonio Rezza and Flavia Mastrella will soon be in NYC for the first time to celebrate their 30-year-artsy relationship. The duo has been successfully acting together for quite some time in Europe and can soon be admired onstage with their most famous show Pitecus. The performance will take place at La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York, from October 13-16. This is meant to be a very busy week due to the Italian American cultural festival taking place in the Big Apple.

Antonio Rezza and Flavia Mastrella do indeed create strange (unusual? ) idioms. Antonio acts solo as a co-protagonist amongst Flavia’s visual day-dreaming creations which take life onstage. Words meet form and play with each other, as drama reaches out to the feelings of the audience, which is constantly encouraged to participate in a game made of sounds, colours, shapes and misconstruction.

PITECUS opened in 1995 and has been running continuously since then. ‘It communicates with the mass by means of a mass-aesthetic taste which is a peculiar way of communicating per se’, say the authors. RezzaMastrella’s work can be defined as ‘unclassifiable’.  Their act has been welcomed by non conventional stages, museums, art galleries and of course theatres in Italy and throughout Europe, as well as in Russia.

Their poetics has no barriers or boundaries, as it originates as an avant-garde expression in whicha young audience can easily identify itselfand values RezzaMastrella’s rebellion toward the idea of living conventionally.

Italian late director Giancarlo Nanni - who worked with Ellen Stewart at La MaMa and also at the Actor Studio led by Estelle Parsons - at some point asked the duo to perform at one of the most influential contemporary theaters in Italy, Teatro Vascello. The theatre has since then become RezzaMastrella’s home.

RezzaMastrella’s art-ignited life expresses itself in different ways, following concurrently a theatrical and cinema dimension. Many are the movie projects that the two artists have produced aside from their countless theatre pieces. NYC will soon have the chance to see them for the first time at La MaMa between 13 and 16 October 2016. Beware - you will no longer do without them!

Book Now! - did you subscribe our newsletter? ask for the reduced tickets code 

Italian Playwrights Project - I Vicini by Fausto Paravidino Sep 21, 2016

Wednesday, September 21, 2016  a special focus on reading in Italian, through a staged reading of excerpts of I Vicini

After being a guest of the first edition of Italian Playwrights Project, Fausto Paravidino comes back to New York to embark on a new endeavor, a play to be written and staged during the second half of 2017. His writing process usually originates on scene, with actors directly testing the play over the course of a workshop.

Italian Playwrights Project– conceived by Umanism NY and Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at CUNY, in association with the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, proudly promotes Paravidino's writing process dedicating a special focus on reading, this time in Italian after last year reading in english by the translation of Jane House, through a staged reading of excerpts of I Vicini, a play which was selected for translation and English publication in 2015.

Special thanks to Kairos Italian Theatre for supporting the workshop.

"Neighbors" I Vicini - says Fausto Paravidino - is a piece on our fears. On our imaginary fears, on our real fears. On our real fears that are often our imaginary fears. In a rarefied and suspended atmosphere and suspended, two young couples meet and clash between the domestic walls.

Fausto Paravidino,

an actor, director, and playwright, was born in Genova, grew up in a small village in northern Italy, and now lives in Rome. His plays include Trinciapollo, Gabriele, 2 Fratelli, La Malattia della Famiglia M, Natura Morta in un Fosso, Peanuts (Connections, National Theatre, London), Genoa 01 (Royal Court Theatre, London), Morbid, Exit, Il Caso B, Il Diario di Mariapia, I Vicini (Thèatre National du Bretange, France), Il Macello di Giobbe (Teatro Valle Occupato), and They Were in My Field (Royal Court Theatre). Several of his plays were broadcast on Italian public radio. The movie he wrote and directed, Texas, was presented at the 2005 Venice film festival.

Information 

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Italian Cultural Insitute of New York

686 Park Avenue - New York (NY)

From 6:30 pm To 8:30 pm

Organized by : Umanism and Italian Institute of Culture in New York 

Entrance : Free

reading is in italian - english translation by Jane House 

book now

Foot on Face (Opposite have never been so close)

an exhibition by Luca Mazzara at La Nacional (239W 14 ST New York 10011, USA) from sept. 26 to oct 8, 2016

book now!

With these pictures i have intended to do a study of the reactions that may be experienced when a foot, which is not usually considered a means of introduction, is placed on somebody's face.

The initial contact with this part of our body represents an unusual way to meet for the first time, but it is both effective and direct as it does not require any sort of filter. the reaction to this kind of approach doesn't always generate a surprise response; indeed in many cases it appears to be completely normal.

The only true clear thing is the stretching and pressing on the skin of the face, the moving of the eyebrow or the pulling down of the lower lips. this freedom of expression is intended to lead to a practical outcome: to be yourself when you come into contact with another person.this is due to the fact that anything that appears to be different, alien to our experience, causes in us a reaction of detachement. therefore, in this case, the foot (the alien element) assumes an imposing value of "i'm here even though you dont' want to see me". As a consequence a new expressive language is formed. A universal code that can be easily understood by all, achieving the highest communicative level and involving more social strata.foot on the face tells the story of human beings that live their "contact" experiences with a lower world, namely the foot, wich is the support that allows an upright position. It is said that the shape of our feet reveals a lot about characteristic and various sides of our nature.

Luca Mazzara

American Dream by Karole Armitage at Ravello Festival

Valeria Orani is the Administrative Director of American Dream, a project by Karole Armitage host at Ravello Festival

American Dream by Karole Armitage is an evening excursus from native American dance to the dance of the greatest modern choreographers including tip-tap and freestyle influences. 
The programme brings to the stage the stars of the most prominent companies of the States, beginning with the New York City Ballet,  who will perform an excerpt from Apollo, the most significant choreography of the neoclassical development of it founder father George Balanchine to the music of Stravinsky, in its 1928 version; the performance of a duet from Agon, again by Balanchine-Stravinsky, which debuted in 1957; as well as Armitage Gone! Dance, who will perform a fragment of Trio from a new version of Agon commissioned this year to the choreographer-director of the London Philharmonic, who is performing a Stravinsky programme conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. Finally, the Armitrage group will bring to us Ligeti Essays (2007). 
Ailey II, “the next generation of dance”, will perform a repertory piece from their masterpieceRevelations, the piece entitled Wade in the Water (1960), with spirituals, gospel spngs and blues by Alvin Ailey, the Afro-American choreographer of the magnificent company named after him, a company whose aim it is to demonstrate the abilities of his people.
A tribute will be paid to Martha Graham at Ravello by the versatile Richard Move, who is at home both in cabaret and in the theatre, his fame being associated with his great ability to recreate and reinterpret, with wit and bite, the performaces of the “Great Mother” of modern American dance.
“Richard Move Marta @ Ravello” for the choreographer who has left her mark on 20th-century history will be a light entertainment during the whole evening event with its exhilarating contribution to the programme, , and it will demonstrate the finest techniques and repertory, from Acts of Light toAppalachian Spring, together with a 1931 “Grahamian” masterpiece of his company, Primitive Mysteries.
The programme will be enhanced by a Panorama of Graham pieces (1935) made up of Theme ofDedication, Imperial Theme, Popular Theme with dancers from the Rome National Dance Academy and a duet from New Sleep (1987) by the brilliant American author William Forsythe, a maestro of post-classical ballet, performed by dancers of Dresden’s Semperoper.
American Dream will conclude with a choral choreography commissioned exclusively for the Ravello Festival: a choreography from George Gershwin’s Summertime by Karole Armitage.
The spirit of American Dream will be seen in another creative emotional event that opens itselfto the world that and that stands out in the festival programme: the evening event Cubanía en el Ballet, which unites artists from the Cuban national company with European and American companies , all in the excellent  Escuela Nacional de Ballet,  which brings “the family” together and alongside North American dancers in a felicitousreunion of names from the world of dance.

Elisa Guzzo Vaccarino