Arsenale 2011
BODY IN PROGRESS
Arsenale Della Danza is an intensive educational dance laboratory. It serves as a multifunctional space for dialog with other artistic disciplines like music, video, film, photography, acting, dramaturgy and multimedia design, architecture and urbanism.
This year the theme BODY IN PROGRESS addresses a moment when a young artist decides to dedicate to the art of dance. It needs an extremely intense work to develop outstanding physical capacity and respond to the diversity of techniques and styles. We can visualize the body as a unique orchestra with the task to play all the parts of the body responding like musical instruments in its range of movement. But at the time the body orchestra starts to tune and prepare itself for a symphony it needs a fundamental experience to act in response to such a difficult task. It is exactly the moment that the dancer is in extreme need to find space and capability to place himself, investigate and refine his achieved skills.
We can observe an intense series of initiatives taking place in actual European dance education. In 2010 the dance sector of La Biennale di Venezia consigned for the first time the Leone d´Argento per la Danza and it went to an educational institution. The school PARTS of Belgium, Brussels guided by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker received the award for its innovative educational achievement.
In its 2011 issue, Arsenale della Danza extends its targets and reflects on the sources of the art of dance. If we assume that the mirror of civilized society is reflected by the exercise of its cultural values, the art of dance can also give a strong response and an upgrade of existential and human merits. It can enable an impressive scope of transformation, changing lives of so many people and has the capacity to influence personal paths of life and even advance social structures. Arsenale della Danza is starting an exchange project to dialog with this intriguing reality.
It is settling a platform presenting diverse talents from less privileged sectors of societies and communities. Extending the European perspective, Arsenale della Danza is in cooperation with the cultural institution of SESC Sao Paulo. La Biennale di Venezia and SESC Sao Paulo organized a national audition in Brazil and awarded five scholarships for young Brazilian dancers. The selection concentrated in elements emerging from projects of artistic and social character developed in the favellas, ghettos and less privileged outskirt communities.
The 2011 educational program features an intense study of classical technique for contemporary dancers and master classes of the most important contemporary European dance techniques. It includes African-American dance technique Katherine Dunham, Forsythe improvisation Technologies, Movement Repertoire Rosas, Brazilian Martial Arts (“the Art of Survival”) Capoeira, and actual American Funk Styles. The 4-month program is designed to solidify and enlarge the physical repertoire of the contemporary dancer. The lessons of improvisation and composition are fundamental to master the use of space and inspire personal expression and creativity. It is complemented by theory classes on dance history conducted by university professors from Europe and Brazil. A special focus is on modernistic development of art in Brazil. After each phase of study the result will be presented with an Open-Doors lecture presentation. The program of studies is concluded by the experience of a stage performance choreographed by Ismael Ivo, premiered in Venice and presented on a tour in Veneto and Brazil.
BODY IN PROGRESS project is an intense process to support the individual to investigate and to find innovative ways for art expression to emerge. It provides an attentive look at how the educational art of dance has the ability to influence and many times redefine the lives and destiny of the young artists.
December 2010
Ismael Ivo