Foofwa d’Imobilité
Foto © Gregory Batardon
In 2024, Foofwa pulled off a crazy and probably unheard-of feat, in the joy of challenge and discovery: during the night of January 27 and 28, he covered 54 kilometers in a dancewalk during the Paris-Versailles-Mantes Convivial Walk; then a few days later, he continued to bring his ecoptimist character Olgo to life in the streets of Geneva. These are just two examples of the public space projects the dancer is now developing with the support of the new Vivrar Association.
Trained by his mother Beatriz Consuelo, notably at the Ballet Junior de Genève, dancer at the Stuttgart Ballet and then at the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, choreographer since 1998, Foofwa occupies a pivotal position between tradition and innovation in the choreographic field. Between 2000 and 2022, with his company Neopost Foofwa, he studied the relationship between dance and sport and created the “Dancerun”, a hybrid activity between running and dancing over several kilometers (2003-2008). In 2015, he invented the “Dancewalk” and covered almost 1,000 kilometers of dance in over 50 performances in 36 regions of the world, alone or in a group, until 2021.
In 2019 the Dancewalk came to TiD and stretched for the length of 14 km through what today is the award winning naturalistic trail of the river Laveggio. On that occasion Foofwa collaborated with artist Ilija Luginbhül to unravel a 14km bundle of red thread along the path, from Stabio to Riva San Vitale.
Teatro danzabile
Teatro Danzabile is a theater and dance company from Lugano, founded in 2005. It operates regionally, nationally, and internationally in production, professional training, and inclusive and accessible cultural projects: collaborating with performers with and without disabilities, cultivating research and experimentation where the languages of theater and dance blend to give voice and body to everyone’s experiences.
It undertakes projects in collaboration with various institutional and cultural entities at national and European levels: in 2022, it produced the international contemporary dance performance "A Space for All Our Tomorrows" with Annie Hanauer (UK), Laila White (ES), and Giuseppe Comuniello (IT), co-produced by LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura.
Through its artistic research, Teatro Danzabile promotes performative practice as a privileged and precious space to facilitate encounters, exchanges, and collaborations among human beings, with their vulnerabilities and peculiarities. Its artistic direction promotes inclusive behaviors and trains audiences to recognize the authentic value of diversity on stage.
Since 2010, the independent company has been led by Emanuel Rosenberg, director, actor, and dancer.
Artists
Joshua Akubo Gabriel
Photo © Collins Sunday @newnezz
Joshua Akubo Gabriel is a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and community strategist born and raised in Kaduna, Nigeria. He is co-founder of Duniatè Culture LTD/Festival and Art Resource Center Kaduna - an arts and culture organization that supports and highlights the creative ingenuity of young, emerging artists, with a passion for uplifting cultural diversity through exchange programs and art project developments. He just completed his first work No Man’s Land that had it first showing at the Biennial de la danse Lyon in September.
He enjoys teaching dance around the world on movement explorations in the African aesthetics of movement and touring internationally performing in theaters and festivals. He is motivated by the need for cross-cultural literacy in human rights and diversities with a strong interest in decolonisation of the black body.
He is inspired by the simplicity of life, the capacity of all human beings to care for one another and our planet with generosity, compassion, and justice. As a dancer and choreographer, these ideas manifest in his movement philosophy, Structure and Chaos(Notion Obedience) is a movement philosophy that questions the body’s journey through ever evolving space time.
The intersections between thinking and doing that demonstrates temporalities and dismantles the linear idea of being or even beginning or what is, what can or cannot be movement. The movement explores textures from many disciplines with a base in the cultural structure of dance in Nigerian movement and from masters who are constantly investigating the relationships of decolonized bodies. He uses techniques from Capoeira, Krump, floorwork, Afro-cultural movement.
Patrick Bayha
Before his artistic journey, Patrick Bayha studied linguistics in the south of Germany. Language has always intrigued him, and the origins, variations, and use of written but spoken language still amaze him every day. However, perhaps because he is more of a listener, his focus eventually shifted to movement language, and he has stuck to it until today.
His first encounter with dance was in the Street- and Clubstyle scene in his home city of Freiburg im Breisgau. Together with others, he organized street jams, sessions, workshops, and other community-based events. Due to the lack of a fixed location, they often had to make use of outdoor and public spaces, and he learned how to make the best out of the possibilities offered. Ideas like “each one, teach one” and the exchange aspect of HipHop culture are still part of his core values.
To deepen his understanding of community practice, Patrick moved to Holland to pursue studies in dance education. Here, he got in touch with the theatrical world of contemporary dance and traditional and non-traditional performance methods and spaces. Since then, he has been connecting as a creative between different communities, art forms, and dance styles in a performative but educative frame. Always listening and with a researching approach to his artistic practice, he believes in the interconnection and interdependence of things. He is passionate about finding gaps and making links in order to create more open sources for inspiration and creativity.
Vittoria Caneva
Photo © Anna Kushnirenko
Vittoria Caneva is an Italian dance artist.
She performed for Yasmeen Godder, Nora Chipaumire, Melanie Démers, Masako Matsushita, Kinkaleri, Chiara Frigo, Beatrice Bresolin, Giorgia Lolli.
Since 2019 she is a Dance Well Teacher - Movement Research for Parkinson’s. As a freelance active in Italian and European festivals and residencies, she cultivates her interest in physical and choreographic practices that challenge the themes of sustainability, inclusiveness and empathy.
Enrico Frisoni
Enrico Frisoni is a performer, scholar, author, assistant director, and theater teacher for children and teenagers. In 2022, he obtained a Master’s Degree in Philosophical Sciences from the University of Milan with a thesis titled “Living Archives: The Desire for Memory in Dance”. He collaborates as an assistant director and author with the Domesticalchimia company, with which he has been involved in various theater projects since 2019. In Milan, he works as a theater teacher with Campo Teatrale. He is the author of the play “Basso Continuo/Visiting Prisoners”, part of “Misericordia”, a production by Campo Teatrale developed as part of the Unprotected project. He moderates post-show discussions for the Venice Biennale within the 15th International Contemporary Dance Festival.
In 2021, he won the Biennale College ASAC-Residency Writing Grant, dedicated to dance. He participates in the 5th EASTAP conference and the LIMEN Beyond Borders seminar. In 2023, he publishes an essay titled “The Narrative in Dance in Venice in the 1940s and 1950s: A Walk through the Historical Archive of Contemporary Arts” for the Venice Biennale, as part of the Biennale College ASAC-Residency Writing - Dance Venice 2020, and the essay “The Desire for Memory in Dance: Between Archiving, Survival, and Authorship” for the journal “Dance and Research”. As a performer, he trained in Milan and Rome. Currently, he continues his somatic research and authorial creation within Da.Re. Dance Research under the direction of Adriana Borriello.
Enrico’s research focuses on incommunicability, memory, endings, height, autobiography, grandparents, loneliness, and the chorus. He approaches staging with theoretical and somatic studies, combining philosophical research and critical and dramaturgical writing with bodily study tools. He composes by looking at the fabric of reality, breaking it down and expanding it. He is interested in collective processes, the limit as a space of border-crossing and creation, and the commitment of artistic practice as political and poetic action.
Leung Hoi Yee (Alysa)
Photo © Evelyn Wan
Alysa is an artist and dramaturg based in Hong Kong, travelling between Asia and Europe. She is graduated with an M.A. in Contemporary Theatre, Dance and Dramaturgy at Utrecht University (2021-2022) with a full Holland Scholarship and Bachelor of Communication (Hons) in Public Relations and Advertising from HKBU. She is devoted to researching sites, body, and self-identity connections with intercultural artistic research, experimental performance, and community arts. Her research interest covers from cities to oceanic cultures.
Alysa’s work has been presented locally and across various cities, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Itoshima, Vienna, Kortrijk, and more. Latest work: “Beyond the Shore”, Inter-Island Festival 2023 (Artist), “DAWN 4.0: Beyond the Shore”, Itoshima International Art Festival (Artist), “DAWN 3.0: a City. a Girl. a House”, Kunstencentrumbuda (Artist), ”DAWN 2.0” --- Let’s Be Together Arts Festival Taiwan 2022 (Artist), ”DAWN 1.0” --- ATLAS- ImpulzTanz- Vienna International Dance Festival (Artist), “Flight of Fishes”, Hong Kong Arts Festival @Tai Kwun 2023 (assistant director), “Lost Child Project HK 2022 ---The Perfect MATCH” (Co-Creative Director) etc. She is awarded the Emerging Artist Grant 2024 from HKADC.
Meanwhile, Leung is also active in research and coordination aspects. She worked as the project coordinator (artistic) at City Contemporary Dance Company(HK) and a researcher at Edward Lam Dance Theatre (HK). During her master’s studies, She worked as a dramaturgy intern at NT GENT(Ghent, Belgium) and her thesis was nominated for the Migration and Societal Change Best Master Thesis Award. Leung also assisted in Jen Lam’s creative solo workshop. The team has guided over 50 Hong Kong women to create their pieces. She was the core member of CCDC Baby Dance Theatre. She also trained for Two years- Professional Physical Theatre Youth Training programme and received RAD (Ballet) Advanced II certificates.
Natascha Moschini
Photo © Karin Salathé
Natascha Moschini (*1982, Stuttgart) studied contemporary dance in Antwerp, Performance Studies in Hamburg and Contemporary Arts Practice in Bern. She is interested in the ethics, aesthetics and politics of the human body. In her choreographic and visual works she addresses social power structures and exposes dependency relationships. Her observations show analytical acumen and are characterized by a high sensitivity for tensions. The uncovering of grievances as well as the decoding and recoding are core aspects of her work. At times she takes these utopian re-codings outside her artistic practice into new research constellations. Thus, she is part of the danse et dramaturgie funding program 2019/2020 and the laboratory handle with care in the national network of swiss theaters and received the development contribution of the Fachausschuss Tanz +Theater BL & BS 2022. New spaces of possibility and thought experiments characterize an essential approach of all her work processes. Reflectively she likes to accompany other artists in their work or to stand in an intensive artistic dialogue with them.
Natascha Moschini was Artist in Residence at Espace Libre in 2019 and Associated Artist at Dampfzentrale in Bern in 2020/2021. 2023 she is AIR at Residency La Ma (IT), Studio Meriodional (FR), Raumstation (D). Currently, she is working on her new performance “Agility of Fear”, premiering in April 2024 at ROXY Birsfelden.
Giovanna Rovedo
Photo © Ivan Provenzale
Giovanna Rovedo graduated from Accademia Nazionale di Danza (2009) and in anthropology from La Sapienza University of Rome (2017). Since 2009 she has been working as an author, researcher and interpreter. Her work is hosted among others at: PIA, Anghiari Dance Hub, CSS Teatro Stabile di Innovazione FVG, Paesaggi del Corpo, Second Hand, Nah Dran, Moving Poets, La Mama Moves, Off Label, TEDxPadova, Fabbrica Europa and Inteatro Festival. She worked in the Philippines, Germany, Egypt, India and the United States. Since 2011 she has been part of the multidisciplinary art collective Dimensionen (DE).
In 2015 she worked with Laurent Chétouane at the Biennale Danza College and in the same year with CSS - Teatro Stabile di Innovazione FVG for a production with Citizenship directed by Virgilio Sieni. In 2021, again with CSS, she is choreographer assistant and performer for another production by Virgilio Sieni. Since 2015 he has been working with Sharon Estacio, a Filipino American dance artist, dealing with artistic research linked to the relationship between geographical space and the construction of contemporary identity. The couple has made two projects: The Reconciliation of Magik Salap (a Triptych) and Orchestrating Spaces hosted at: Jorge Vargas Museum (UP Diliman, Manila PI); Le Murate PAC Firenze Open Art Project; Company Blu (Art. 43) and SESTO TRAM; Officina Caos / Teatro Stalker Per Un Teatro Contemporaneo; Festival La Città che Viaggia; Officin&Ideali - Residenze in Transito (MIBACT/SIAE - «PerChiCrea») Carovana S.M.I., la Scatola dell’Arte, CSS Dialoghi - Residenze delle Arti Performative a Villa Manin, Festival Paesaggi del Corpo, ARTinVAL.
In 2017 she participates in Month of Research experimental research project promoted by TanzBüro and HZT Berlin and hosted at the Uferstudios in Berlin (DE).
Since 2018 she has been an associate artist of Compagnia Atacama.
In 2021 she founded T20 studio of which he is currently president. For T20, whose aim is territorial regeneration through an active dialogue between art and design, she curates artistic projects.
As of 2019, after calling home Rome and Berlin, she and her family decided to move to a remote valley in the Friulian Dolomites in search of a more satisfying and frugal quality of life.