Eco

Light

Eco

Light

Scroll to top
Search everywhere |
Exclude the Archive |
Search in the Archive

Press release REf15


Press release REf15

ROMAEUROPA FESTIVAL celebrates its 30th anniversary!
76 days of performances | more than 300 artists | 48 events | 15 venues |
15 meet-ups with the audience | 3 performances and 11 works on display at Digitalife – Luminaria

Theatre, dance, contemporary circus, art, technology, and above all music, comprise the 48 events of the thirtieth edition of the Romaeuropa Festival, RiCreazione, which takes place from 23rd September to 8th December in fourteen different venues across Rome. The program also includes post show talks with artists, plus workshops for the more enthusiastic spectator.
“Over the past thirty years, we have tried to create a festival that reflects a world in motion,” says Monique Veaute, President and, with Jean-Marie Drot and Giovanni Pieraccini, co-founder of Romaeuropa. “The Festival’s program has always privileged innovation and change as seen from the perspective of contemporary artists and their works. We have always nurtured those talents that reinterpret tradition in a creative way, but without any loss of dialogue, of curiosity, respect, and research”. Artistic Director Fabrizio Grifasi adds, “Seeing the contemporary in its historical context, and reworking it, is the theme of the Festival. The playful and joyful title of this year’s edition, RiCreazione (RiCreation), refers to the act of recreating the forms, the times, and the aesthetics of artistic creation.”
There are 18 Italian premières and 76 days of performances during which more than 300 artists from 21 countries will be interpreting the transformations taking place today from their own particular perspective. This is what Romaeuropa artists have done for the past thirty years, making the festival an international showcase of excellence.
Robert Lepage will open Romaeuropa 2015 with 887, an impressive theatrical piece in which the director himself performs. The Festival also sees the return of other important figures that have provided some of the most memorable moments of past editions. The Franco-Spanish choreographer Maguy Marin was at the first edition of Romaeuropa in 1986 and this year she is back with May-B, while Jan Fabre and 27 performers from Troubleyn take on their most daring challenge in terms of time and pure theatre: a 24-hour show entitled Mount Olympus. To glorify the cult of tragedy. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker presents Vortex temporum and Verklärte Nacht to music by Grisey and Schönberg (the latter performed live by the Ictus ensemble), while there is also a double bill of work by Canadian choreographer Marie Chouinard: Henry Michaux: Mouvements and Gymnopédies to music by Satie. Belgian artist Fabrizio Cassol performs with eleven musicians from Egypt, Syria, Turkey, France, Belgium and the USA in AlefBA, while British choreographer Russell Maliphant makes his debut at the Festival with Conceal|Reveal. All these shows will be performed at Teatro Argentina working in partnership with the Teatro di Roma.
For this 30th anniversary, the closest “friends” of the Festival cannot be overlooked: at the Auditorium Conciliazione Akram Khan presents Kaash, with music by Nitin Sawhney and stage design by Anish Kapoor, and Emma Dante is at Teatro Vittoria with her staging of an impossible interview entitled Io, Nessuno e Polifemo. Intervista impossibile (I, Nobody and Polyphemus) and Operetta burlesca (Burlesque Operetta). Romeo Castellucci presents fragments from Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) at the Roman Baths of Diocletian, and Valérie Dréville is in Schwanengesang D744, to music by Schubert, at Teatro India.
Ten choreographers of DNA -a project focusing on young and emerging European dance devised by Anna Lea Antolini- present their work at Teatro India, in collaboration with Teatro di Roma and the Aerowaves network, a hub for innovative dance. A second group of emerging Italian choreographers present their work at the Romaeuropa Opificio. The Carrozzeria Orfeo theatre
company makes its Roman debut Animali da bar. Ascanio Celestini, instead, makes his Festival debut with his new production, Laika, at Teatro Vascello, which is also where the Danish collective Hotel Pro Forma presents Laughter in the Dark, an adaptation of Nabokov’s novel that blends theatre, installation, visual arts and choreography.
On the same stage, dance takes on the color of flamenco with Aurélien Bory’s piece for Stéphanie Fuster (Questquetudeviens? A piece by Aurélien Bory for Stéphanie Fuster), or relies on digital technology with acrobats Adrien M / Claire B’s work (Le mouvement de l’air); acrobatics is also at the core of Nos limites by Radhouane El Meddeb.
Circus, theatre and dance are the basic ingredients of Cuisine et confessions, a surreal and powerful show of culinary acrobatics by the nine extraordinary performers of the Québécois company Les 7 doigts de la main who are at the Festival for the first time this year.
Music and performing art also animate MAXXI with Alessandro Sciarroni and the dancers of Balletto di Roma, performing together in Turning | Symphony of sorrowful song, a site-specific piece devised for the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts. This is also the venue for Musica da Cucina by Fabio Bonelli -aka People From The Mountains- who will present a second work, Matita, at MACRO Testaccio – La Pelanda.
A river of music flows between La Pelanda, Teatro Vascello and the Auditorium, to finally merge with theatre, performance and contemporary art. The avant-garde of the twentieth century is represented by Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Stimmung, performed by VoxNova Italia and Mauricio Kagel’s Acustica in a new version by the Tempo Reale Electroacustic Ensemble. Bruno Maderna’s Hyperion will also be presented in a new version by Muta Imago, while John Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes for prepared piano is performed by Fabrizio Ottaviucci.
Rock music takes center stage in the live performance of nulla è andato perso by Gianni Maroccolo, Alessandra Celletti, Beppe Brotto and the MASBEDO duo, as well as in Pictures at an exhibition by Mussorgskij in a new version by The Winston + Esecutori di metallo su carta. Contemporary art meets music in the brilliant concert/performance for symphonic light The Enlightenment by Quiet Ensemble, and in Across the Line by Rhò, Daniele Spanò and Luca Brinchi.
The new music of the African Renaissance is performed live by Pat Thomas & Kwashibu Area Band, Petite Noir and BLK JKS in the Afropolitan program, organized jointly with Afrodisia. The prestigious festival Club To Club is devoted to electronic culture.
Last but not least, Epica Etica Etnica Pathos – 25 years, the fourth album of the legendary Italian band CCCP, is being performed live for the very first time by a new group consisting of four original members of CCCP and some of the most important musicians and singers of the Italian indie rock.
Luminaria, the sixth edition of the Digitalife exhibition, is on at La Pelanda with eleven installations and a rich program of performances.
This year, there are fifteen initiatives in the INformazione program (Iridico Danza, Racconti di Scena, L’altra Danza, Dna Pictures, Dna Visioni, Dna movie, Dna words, mòsso, InAct, Artist Today, Music Insid(i)e, Warming Up!, Dna europe meets Aerowaves, Let’s dance) where Romaeuropa invites its Festival-going public to practical and theory workshops, talks and meetings with the artists. The project is organized in tandem with a network of institutions: the Facoltà di Lettere at the Sapienza – University of Roma, the Scuola di Ballo del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, the Balletto di Roma, the European Dance Alliance-Valentina Marini Management, Officine Fotografiche, Dynamis Teatro, the Teatro Azione theatre school, the European network Aerowaves and various dance schools in the capital.