A preview of the Festival, on Tuesday 10 September, at 6 pm at the Teatro Europa, will be the open rehearsal of Appunti per il sole (Notes for the Sun) by Daniele Albanese, with Fabio Pronestì and Diego Spiga, a fragment of a new project inspired by the Sun, as a symbol of strength and energy, and by its cyclical nature in our lives. A performance on the transition between movement and energy, in a progressive increase in the intensity of the show.

Inaugurating the Festival will be the very young Compagnia Parini Secondo x Bienoise who, after last year’s success, will present their new creation HIT OUT in Piazza Garibaldi on Monday 16 September at 6 p.m., an agile and compact version of their new choreographic and musical project in which jumping rope is used as a percussive element to manifest embodied rhythms. After a year of athletic training, supported by the Italian jumpers community and sponsored by MarcRope – Make your cardio an art in Milan, the group focuses on the sound produced by the skipped rope, dissecting its timbral possibilities. The jumpers on stage Sissj Bassani, Martina Piazzi, Camilla Neri and Francesca Pizzagalli, perform a rhythmic and choreographic score in which single-under, side-swing and double-under are both athletic and musical elements. The pounding succession of rope strokes becomes an echo of the rebellion against those forces that would have us motionless, lying on the ground with our eyes closed.

On the same day, at the Teatro Europa, at 9 p.m., Pietro Pireddu, one of the emerging choreographers on the Italian scene, returns to Parma with Panimundu, a reflection on the identity of performance and perception. Panimundu is a complex life form, an entity made up of bodies in space, of actions that are the sap that nourishes this life form, of paths that are the result of particular choices and internal movements. The performers Carolina Amoretti, Chiara Casiraghi and Giulia Gilera experience themselves and their own uniqueness, experimenting a reflexive approach that disposes them to observe their own actions as they are produced, reproduced and activated.

On Tuesday 17 September, at 5 p.m., in the courtyard of the Biblioteca Civica, Lucia Palladino, a transdisciplinary artist and researcher in the fields of performance, choreography and writing, presents Correspondances into the forest, an invitation to the practice of the unknown that moves as soon as it is named, an exercise in the struggle of resistance against the capitalist system of production that dominates the entire system of knowledge. Verbal language is investigated from an ontological point of view, i.e. how it becomes a producer of knowledge.

At 6.15pm at Alice’s Library, at Parco Ducale, Dehors/Audela present Mentre tutti intorno fanno rumore, concept by Salvatore Insana and Elisa Turco Liveri, choreography Elisa Turco Liveri, with Alice Ruggero, Andrea Sassoli, Cecilia Ventriglia, an outdoor version of the second fragment of the Aporie project, born in 2019 thanks to the support of the CNDC La Briqueterie in Paris. The result of a series of experiments, adaptations and temporal suspensions, Mentre tutti intorno fanno rumore is located in the infra-thin space between skin and dress, the fabric that simultaneously separates and connects, searching for the same possible relationship between the bodies in movement and the space/landscape traversed, negotiating and dissolving the distinction between inside and outside.

Four actions in four public spaces in the city: this is LABORATORY, which on Wednesday 18 September will take place in two locations in the historic centre, P.le F. Borri (6 p.m.) and P.le San Lorenzo (6.30 p.m.), and two in Oltretorrente, P.le Picelli (7 p.m.) and Via D’Azeglio/Portici Ospedale Vecchio (7.30 p.m.), with short choreographic actions by dancer-authors Riccardo De Simone, Chiara Montalbani, Manfredi Perego and Danilo Smedile. The four artists will propose different languages, united by great technical skills and a marked sensitivity to space. Four improvisations that will allow some corners of the city to come to life in a new way for the public and passers-by.

On Thursday 19 September, at 6 p.m. at the Pavese Library, C.G.J. Collettivo Giulio e Jari will present Fuego, a choreographic and sound format that feeds on a continuous becoming, declining developments, intentions and impulses in a constant flux. Shamanic and hypnotic elements are integrated to create an immersive experience, influencing movements and perceptions. This interaction between body and sound evokes a collective trance, transcends everyday reality and invites a transformative inner journey.

Afterwards, already guests of the first edition of the Festival, the philosopher Maurizio Zanardi and Alessandro Pontremoli, professor of Disciplines of the Performing Arts at the University of Turin, starting from their respective and different fields of research around dance, will be the protagonists of the Talk Dance and Power.

On Friday 20 September, at 9 p.m. at the Teatro Europa, Michele Di Stefano/mk presents SFERA #uno stato eternamente nascente. Like a chessboard in disequilibrium, the show is an assemblage of bodies seeking their own understanding by scattering words and gestures, hunting for a physiological alliance, a new form of intimacy. The sound of the voice and the dance are spatialised as in a Kecac, a ritual in the Balinese tradition built from an explosion of sounds generated by a complex vocal polyrhythm to fulfil a superstitious function, to awaken the dead and ensure protection against environmental threats. A ritual that, if today it has become an entertainment occasion for tourists, has lost none of its visionary charm. On the basis of this suggestion, the intention is to return corporeity to its magical function, an instrument capable of reshuffling the relationships between individuals and favouring the birth of dances that come to life from that understanding between bodies.