As if you should explain it to a child: why have you started dancing?
For fun! Because dance is a beautiful game made of many people!

According to your personal experience, a border is:
A forcing of power and mind.
The border is a political concept that generates pain.

Four dancers inhabit the rooms of the Spazzapan Gallery in Gradisca d'Isonzo and interact with the artworks and with the urban environment. A site-specific performance in an evocative place that is not usually catered to shows: where did this idea come from and why?
We love to integrate the body into space, to make it a work of art itself, to take dance to its impromptu side. Dance happens between bodies, escapes between works of art, it takes refuge in the eye of the spectator. The Spazzapan Gallery, which is currently under renovation, is such a fertile place that it manages to expand and be an open-air museum.

The most interesting thing you have noticed in this kind of experimentation?
The space modifies our writing, the beauty of the audience regenerates us.

Describe your show in three words:
Single, double, quadruple.

Tell me why I should come and see it:
We are dancing just for you.

How does the “Visavì Experimental Contest” work?
The Visavì Experimental Contest is what we may call “a battle show”, an event where the board directly invites the guest dancers to perform and participate in the challenges. Dancers who have distinguished themselves in other contests and festivals and who are directly invited to participate and bring their personal perspective on dance. A duo challenges another duo, so it’s two dancers face to face with other two dancers. All dance styles are allowed, they confront each other and engage in a dialogue.
The artists perform accompanied by live music and improvisation is the fil rouge of the event and they follow the tasks and the key words decided by the jury: both the dancers and the musicians create art on the spot.
The jury evaluating the performances consists of three experts in the field, and by this we mean professional performers, choreographers, directors of dance companies, dance journalists. This composition of the group is designed in order to give different types of opportunities to the dancers: work proposals following this event are now a regular occurrence (work proposals not connected to the event itself, but thanks to the meeting).

Where did the idea come from and why?
The idea was born out of the very desire to be part of it. The idea came from a person who first and foremost was a dancer and still is. The desire to find and create an opportunity to show one’s own dance research, to share one’s visions, to meet new artists, to dance to live music and perhaps to receive some feedback on the hard work of this profession that requires so much obstinacy and constancy. So basically, it all came about thinking about what I would have liked to experience but was only able to see abroad.
When I introduced this contest, and Artisti Associati supported me in starting off this project, there were no “experimental” events in Italy, and I took inspiration from events abroad in which I had taken part and from which I took cues for some of the dynamics of the contest. Then I added some more, thinking about what I would like to do if it were me participating.

What is the role of the audience?
The audience has a fundamental role: to give their vote. While on the one hand we have the jury, made of “experts” in the field from a technical point of view, on the other hand we have the audience, experts in the field from an “empathetic” point of view. We all know that, luckily or not, technique is not enough, but we also need something else, something which can’t be evaluated with a number from 1 to 10 but which “gets” to the viewer from a very personal point of view.
For this reason, during the final challenge, the audience is asked to share their preference. A majority will be calculated, and the opinion of the audience will be added to the one of the judges to find the winner.

The most beautiful thing of this experience:
There are many, the best thing is the new acquaintances that one makes during the contest, whereas maybe the most beautiful moment is when all the dancers are together on stage, ready to perform and in the background the musicians start warming up their instruments, a moment charged with energy.

Tell us as if you should explain it to a child: why have you started dancing?
Because I liked it, time flied and when I was done, I was so happily tired!

According to your personal experience, a border is:
The beginning.

Have you been to Gorizia before? If you have, one thing that surprised you:
It seemed that there was a closer contact between the city and the citizens and at the same time a very strange geography, a gateway towards other horizons.

According to your personal experience, a border is:
A mental limit, a protection against what is foreign in a more or less concrete form.

Tell us as if you should explain it to a child: why have you started dancing?
Because I wanted to feel the music in my body and the music of my body.

A piece of advice to a starting company:
Listen to the audience, keep your identity and always put your convictions on the line.

A show that will be performed three times in three different locations during the festival. It is a new and innovative version of the Rite of the Spring that changes each time, depending on the venue and the audience’s intervention. With this piece, what do you most want to convey/tell the audience?
The responsibility of a more or less direct human community on the fate of seemingly unrelated persons.

Tell us why we should come and see it:
Your presence determines the unique and irreplicable outcome of the show.

The full-length performance of “Girls&Boys” will be presented for the first time in Italy during the Visavì Gorizia Dance Festival. It is described as a playful and provocative performance that overturns gender dynamics and roles. In this national premiere, what do you most want to convey/tell the audience?
I want to tell the audience to be kind to one another, to discover patience in challenging moments, to question their patterns, to get friendly with the unknown, to let go of sacred cows, to rebel when needed, to compromise when needed, to get lost on purpose sometimes, to be aware of the value of boredom and that everything in and around us is temporary. 

Describe your show in three words:
Let me think

Tell us why we should come and see it:
You should come and see the show without question and regardless of how much pleasure it will give you or suffering it will cause you. You should come in order to support art in general and the form of contemporary dance specifically, which is something that is really needed in society. 

According to your personal experience, a border is:
An object between two countries

As if you should explain it to a child: why have you started dancing?
Every time I was happy I felt the need to dance. Every time I heard music I felt the need to dance. Every time I felt sad or excited or bored or restless or angry or energetic - I felt the need to dance.

A piece of advice to a starting company:
Take a big breath before you start.

Mattia Cason, dancer & and a part of artistic direction of En–Knap Group
Petra Glad Mažar, head of the Zagreb Dance Company

Have you been to Gorizia before? If you have, one thing that surprised you. If you haven’t, one thing that you dream of finding.
Mattia: Yes, I have been in Gorizia many times; the thing that has fascinated me the most up to now is the Jewish cemetery just out of town, in Rožna Dolina, with the simple, undecorated and down to earth tomb of Carlo Michelstaedter - the famous philosopher and a point of reference in my life.
Petra: No, never been there. We hope to meet new people, discover artists that we haven't had a chance to see before and find an audience that will love and embrace our Gran Bolero.

According to your personal experience, a border is:
Mattia:  A place where differences meet. The most "European" of all the places on earth. I crossed the Italian-Slovenian border many times, in Gorizia as well as elsewhere, and I have always been fascinated about how the continuity of natural landscape was accompanied by slight, gradual changes in the cultural landscape(s)… coming from Italy you feel abroad already while climbing the first foothills, coming from Slovenia, Venezia is present so quickly when descending the upper Vipava valley…
Petra: A border is a limit. And limits need to be crossed in order to explore, experience and learn.

As if you should explain it to a child: why have you started dancing?
Mattia: Because when I ran, when I jumped, I felt happy, as simple as that! Much more than being an art, dance is an existential experience, a physical, sensorial, irrational mode of existing which allows us to go beyond Plato’s law of non-contradiction, to experience the world as it really is: contradictory, wonderfully pointless and always moving, moving, moving.
Petra: I am not a professional dancer but sometimes I do dance.  When dancing, I feel myself again, it's a way to make me feel real.  And as a producer and curator, I am in love with contemporary dance for almost two decades now. Why? I enjoy the breadth of experience that contemporary dance gives me, the opportunities to insert meanings and emotions into performances I watch and the processes I am a part of. This is also the reason why, long time ago, I switched from drama to dance; the openness and frankness I feel in dance.

A piece of advice to a starting company:
Mattia: To think about content, not about form. To try to focus on what is really important and then say, share it through the body or through whatever might come – only not to get stuck into a school, a style, whatsoever ready-made pattern; to keep on being yourself and try to share yourself with others, explore the body inside and through the body the outside world, the landscapes, the people… form will come by itself, if one keeps keep focusing on whatever feels like life - like truth. Quoting Ludwig Wittgenstein: »Keep focusing on whatever sounds like ‘was der Fall ist’.
Petra: Surround yourself with smart people and create from the heart!

This new version of “Gran Bolero” will be presented for the first time in Italy during the Visavì Gorizia Dance Festival. Defined as a classical composition that is anything but classical, in this national premiere what do you most want to convey/tell the audience?
Mattia: To sit, relax, and if you feel like it... enjoy! And if you truly enjoy, feel free to stand up, to come on stage, to join the never-ending going 'round and 'round!
Petra: We are delighted to present Gran Bolero in Italy. The template from which everything started is Maurice Ravel's Bolero, music that we consider classical. We want the audience to rediscover the composition with the shifts woven by José Pablo Polo and the movements so cleverly thought out by Jesus Rubio Gamo. You will think you know what to expect, but then again, contemporary dance is here to surprise you.

Tell us why we should come and see it.
Mattia: Because it can be a truly collective experience, where the genius of Ravel and his Boléro might help us all to feel a bit closer, a bit better.
Petra: If you love theatre, if you fancy contemporary dance or if you need time for yourself, come - I strongly believe you will enjoy it. For me, it's like good therapy.

“The Little Flower King” explores a form of contamination between the languages of dance, shadow theatre and music, a project around which two historic structures of theatre and dance have come together: Balletto di Roma and Teatro Gioco Vita. With this work, what do you want to convey/tell the audience?
After having known both these art and production environments, I am certain that the desire is to entertain with images and movement, but also to whisper thoughts on timeless human themes and values, such as the search for happiness, which is often sought far away in other places and dimensions, without realizing that it is right before our eyes or it has long been living next door, just like in the Little Flower King.

If you had to describe your show in 3 words
Colourful, exciting, contemplative.

Tell us why we should come and see it
Coming to see the show is definitely a good way to have topics to start conversations and thoughts with the little ones.

According to your personal experience, a border is
An idea more than often doesn’t match reality!

Tell us as if you should explain it to a child: why have you started dancing?
I have no doubt on my answer! I’ll invite them to dance and move and the answer will come by itself.

Tell us why we should come and see it
To discover and to discover themselves!

Have you been to Gorizia before? If you haven’t, one thing that you dream of finding
No, never been before. I hope to find a beautiful audience and children happy to come and see us.

According to your personal experience, a border is
A border is a limit that can we crossed.

Tell us as if you should explain it to a child: why have you started dancing?
I started dancing late in my life, when I was 21. Dance has been my way out. I started doing it when I was about to graduate in biology and I realized how happy I was every time I went to dance classes – so after graduating I made my choice.

A piece of advice to a starting company
At the beginning you need to be very patient and most of all you need to be brave, go ahead and believe in your projects also when they slam the door in your face.

“Panda’s House” puts on stage images and sounds, it creates sensitive, colourful and interactive environments for an immersive experience. With this work, what do you want to convey/tell the audience?
The most important thing for us is to keep the children (and adults) engaged with their eyes glued to the scene. Sometimes we also work with very young children and the challenge is even greater.

Tell us why we should come and see it
The house of the panda is a show to see!!! Discover the 5 elements of the Chinese culture, fight monsters, see rabbits on the moon and much more. Only with your help the protagonist can find their Panda!!!

Have you been to Gorizia before? If you have, one thing that surprised you.
I’ve been to Gorizia several times. It’s a city stuck in time, where stories mix and mingle.

According to your personal experience, a border is
A human artifact though which the patriarchal pattern has forced the world to organize, to the detriment of racialized, sexualized and offended people.

Tell us as if you should explain it to a child: why have you started dancing?
Because dancing is a wonderful way of getting tired and of exhausting the energies we have in our body.

A piece of advice to a starting company
Go and see lots of shows of other artists – if possible, to save the financial resources and travel to do it.

“Gli anni” evokes both the personal and generational narrative of Annie Ernaux’s novel and the famous hit song by 883. With this work, what do you want to convey/tell the audience?
I don’t like to think in terms of a “message” that from the performance goes straight to the audience. The communication of a theatrical work passes more through the misunderstandings than through the readability of the content. Misunderstandings reassign to the audience a space of freedom, a place of thought where to recombine the data to bring the work as close as possible to one’s own life. Gli anni tells the story of a life and I like to think that the story touches the lives of the viewers.

Tell us why we should come and see it
Marta Ciappina is the best performer of the Italian dance scene.

Me Ani (‘Who Am I’) moves from a question “who are we really once all the external definitions and things are stripped away?
With this work that will be presented for the first time in Italy during the Visavì Gorizia Dance Festival, what do you most want to convey/tell the audience?      
I want to invite the audience to feel. To feel free to feel emotions. The emotion felt reveals to everyone the steps of his memory construction : joys, fears, passions and disgusts.
Emotional memory is very intimate as a primitive protection. It is a universal subject.

Describe your creation in three words
“MORE than MEETS the EYE”.

Tell us why we should come and see it
Me Ani (‘Who Am I’) touches the subject of identity in different levels and gives access to both children and adults to reflect on it. It is a colorful dynamic work showcasing the beautiful KCDC 2 dancers.
It is a moment of communication and transmission. Come share with us this moment!

According to your personal experience, a border is
The border is a limit, either not to be crossed, or delimiting your territory of freedom; thus, it is both a constraint or protection in relation to otherness and, on the other hand, a free zone.
It can be physical and terrestrial, it can be social, it can be psychological and deserving of being surpassed. Driven by the irrepressible desire to conceptualize through movement and music, my mind will only have limits in respecting the integrity of the performing dancer; I am not afraid of value judgment, authentic art is beautifully free by its very nature.

As if you should explain it to a child: why have you started dancing?
Dance, movement  and creation are my passion. This is my way of expressing myself, like another language.

A piece of advice to a starting company
Work, determination, imagination and conceptualization. Physical and psychological endurance.

In 2020, you participated in the first edition of the Visavì Gorizia Dance Festival with Instrument Jam. Now you are back with the premier of a choreographic journey that stretches from suffering to happiness. What do you most want to convey/tell the audience?
I would rather say what I want to convey in all my creations, not only in this work. I want to show the behaviour of humanity; I want to show what bodies know and can communicate to other bodies; but above all I want to show the magic that is  created on stage. In short, through the body I would like to show the souls, the excesses, but also the fragilities that live within all bodies. In this work we show the desire for resurrection of a ‘lost’ humanity: rebirth not only of bodies, but also of souls.

If you had to describe your show in 3 words
Allow me 5, but there could be many more: poetic, aesthetic, ironic, violent, felt.

Tell us why we should come and see it
I prefer to convey a message of inner growth and greater altruism towards all dance. Go and see a lot of the 'theatre of bodies': this must be the intention. Having said that, come and see us too because you will see yourselves; yourselves in what you might not be able to do or would like to be. Come and look in the mirror at your souls. The body is 'only' a wrapping that imprisons a soul which needs to express itself and to welcome the other. We do not possess the body, as Heidegger also said. I would add: we are bodies that other bodies have the strength, and often the obligation or if you like the duty, to involve. With the emotions that dance can convey, the bodies of the dancers involve the bodies of the spectators, your bodies, in what is existential in you, not in a vertical or theological sense but in what Sartre used to say, that is, in search of what we will be, what we will become and yet are not, given that the mankind always questions the meaning of their existence. And I believe there is no better and effective artistic expression than dance to reach this intimacy. For this reason and many others, you must come to the theatre.

According to your personal experience, a border is
Personally, the word “border” does not belong to me, at least when it is meant as a boundary space without any possibility of transit. The border tends to force, especially if it is not made up of small empty spaces where it is possible to implement manoeuvres, entrances and exits free of any prejudice where one can recognise the freedom of belonging. Ulysses, as claimed by many philosophers, is the highest example of a desire to trespass into freedom.

Tell us as if you should explain it to a child: why have you started dancing?
My personal experience began out of love for a young girl who danced. Very soon, however, it turned into an experience of passion and consequently of falling in love with dance itself; a passion and love that is still a pivot in my life as an artist.

Piece of advice to a starting company
I do not like to give advice because each individual needs to have a particular attitude towards work, and even more so towards the artistic creation. If I am really put on the spot then my advice is: don’t be in a hurry, believe in yourself by putting great passion and dedication to sacrifice. We are not in a talent show where you look for the X-factor at all costs in the shortest possible time; in “real” life, if there is talent, sooner or later it reveals itself and puts its cards on the table; then you have to know how to read these cards by trying not to bluff, but rather by putting your own authenticity on stage as much as possible.

Have you been to Gorizia before? If you have, one thing that surprised you. If you haven’t, one thing that you dream of finding.
Unfortunately, we’ve never been to Gorizia before. We’d like to find a place where we can find different points of view, with artists who express their world in a personal way and not following something pre-established.

According to your personal experience, a border is
The border too often runs the risk of becoming something that separates and encloses us in a small, self-centered world. On the contrary, we believe that art, in general, can make use of the border to discover who we really are, to discover our culture, and thus to make room for encounters that start from a conscious identity and open up to the sharing and the discovery of new worlds, new possibilities. The border is an opportunity.

If you had to explain it to a child: why have you started dancing?
Maybe because sometimes it is impossible to use words to explain something about yourself, something that even you cannot understand. Movement gives you the possibility to express this feeling, to play with it, without having necessarily to define it.
And it is fun, you can use your imagination and be free to create new worlds: you can become a soldier, a mountain, a magician, you can even fly... when you dance anything is possible!

A piece of advice to a starting company
Study and work hard to try and build a balance in one’s own language, and at the same time to be able to wear an armour to overcome difficulties, criticism, and to remain true to oneself, regardless of the fact that you cannot please everyone.

Your works are born in dialogue with different languages, spanning between dance, theatre and visual arts. With this performance, what do you want to convey/tell the audience?
We ourselves are discovering the effect that our work has on the audience. We start with very concrete and rather complex themes, which look at science or myth, but they are only a starting point from where we develop a new world through our imagination and through the creative process that is activated. The result actually conveys very different feelings and emotions to the audience, which sometimes surprisingly have to do with those very initial concepts from which we started. Other times, on the other hand, it is about feelings that refer to a very personal experience. And for us it is crucial to leave this space to the audience. We try to create feelings that we can let go of, so that everyone can experience this journey in a very personal way.

Tell us why we should come and see it
For us, each performance is a journey that is completed in the encounter with the audience. From this moment, the journey continues in the audience, in their imagination and experience. The spectator feeds on different moments and transforms them, plays with them, transporting them to unknown places. We believe that this is the meaning of a performance: to create it only to give it away to the audience, individually, to each one of the viewers.