Dance that doesn’t "exclude", dance that is aimed at the circulation of voices and multiple skills. Dance that aims to develop the ability to watch in "a different way", to listen in "a different way", which implies the need to accept diversity. From its very beginnings, Oriente Occidente has focused on inclusion; in many works that it has presented, the real expertise - that is the truth - was grafted into the aesthetic research of this or that guest choreographer / director: from Pippo Delbono to Michela Lucenti, by way of the different artists who created for Candoco, up to last year’s presentation of Stopgap Dance Company.
Inserted in European projects aimed at developing new tools for the accessibility of live performance, such as the Creative Europe co-funded ImPArt-Performing Arts redesigned for immediate accessibility (2017-2020), the Festival has now chosen to present Gravity (and other attractions) of the Un-Label company, a global research group that brings together artists, experts and scientists with different skills in order to develop a cognitive background aimed at creating performances that are accessible to everyone and allow all human beings to have an equal experience of an artistic product.
How? ImPArt explores the “aesthetics of access” and utilizes accessibility for artistic innovation. Through the attention or the development of creative audio description, international sign language, visual vernacular, creative captioning, new digital technologies, introductions and descriptions – which have been transformed into key artistic elements of the performance.
The performance Gravity is one result of this collective research which involved four European countries: Armenia, Germany, Greece and Italy. A contemporary dance and descriptive language duet performed by Lolo and Tiki: he is hearing impaired, she is not. In an icy scene, the two of them are sitting on stools, apparently waiting for the subway train. The journey undertaken by the performers is made up of bodies, voices and sign language. They tell their story; and everyone is able to see and hear it thanks to a poetic audio description. Then, each spectator will build his or her own story.