CORPO - Percorsodanza
Watching dance with the whole body
Mediation project winner of the Cantonal Grant 2017
Premiere 28.7.17 Festival TiD17 Stabio
Shows 29.7.17 Festival TiD17 Mendrisio, 8.10.17 Magliaso Paese, 12-13.10.17 Teatro Foce, 19.10.17 Scuola Elementare Stabio, 2-3.3 LAC Lugano,7.4 Performa Festival Losone, 5 maggio, Festa Danzante, Villa dei Cedri, Bellinzona
Concept, choreography and performance: Alessia Della Casa
Choreographic and artistic supervision: Nunzia Tirelli
Illustration and graphic: Liam Walsh
Music composition and performance: Gioacchino Balistreri
CORPO-Percorsodanza is an invitation to feel and experience dance before watching it. It aims to deepen the audience’s understanding of a contemporary way of moving. It is also an invitation to overcome the sense of insecurity and embarrassment that is linked to moving our bodies, in order to regain awareness of our physical sensations and experience greater enjoyment from the art of dance.
Before becoming spectators, humans danced. Gradually, making dance and watching dance became two very separate things, due to the complexity of techniques like ballet and contemporary dance the distance between the audience and the dancer got bigger. But dance is a physical medium, and it produces a very different engagement when experienced directly.
CORPO-Percorso Danza is an installation/performance inspired by the Percorso Vita, a beloved Swiss fitness trail system in which the participant, while following the trail, performs exercises indicated by signs along the way. In CORPO-Percorsodanza the audience is led through an illustrated itinerary of 10 movements through which it experiences contemporary dance before watching it. The subsequent performance demonstrates how contemporary dance choreography is generated from the isolated movements of single body parts combined in time, space and energy.
The work combines music, choreography and illustrations as an interactive, inclusive and multidisciplinary approach to contemporary dance.
The Artists
Originally from Switzerland, Alessia Della Casa completed a 3-year degree at the Ballet Academy in Riga (Latvia) and then moved to New York where she received a scholarship to complete a 2 year certificate in Cunningham technique. In 2016 she completed a Certificate for advance Studies in Performance at SUPSI Academy of Teatro Dimitri, in Switzerland.
In New York Alessia danced for various NYC based artists and started developing her choreographies, her work was presented in New York and Switzerland. She was selected to take part in the Choreographic Lab 2014 promoted by RESO (Luzern, CH). She is the founder and artistic director of the festival Ticino in Danza (www.ticinoindanza.com), that from 2013 takes place in Switzerland and is board member of IDACO NYC (Italian Dance Connection).
Alessia teaches modern and contemporary dance to pre-professional level students in Switzerland. She is also a certified GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® instructor.
Gioacchino Balistreri, pianist multi-instrumentalist, is a film score and theatre music composer.
He regularly performs in the prestigious LAC multicultural center of Lugano (Switzerland),where he lives and works now for several years. He studied “Music Composition for Film” at the Chigiana Academy in Siena (Italy), under the guidance of the Academy Award winner Maestro Luis Bacalov. Among his last works, he composed the original soundtracks for the animated shorts by Nico Bonomolo Confino, winner of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in
2017 (U.S.A.) and currently in the running for the Oscars 2018, and Detours, special mention at the Nastri d’Argento in 2016 (Italy).
Liam Walsh is a cartoonist, writer, and illustrator, originally from northern Wisconsin. He grew up on a dairy farm with lots of siblings and books and a pet crow. Now he lives in the Italian part of Switzerland. His cartoons appear in The New Yorker magazine pretty frequently, his first children’s book was published in 2016 by Neal Porter Books.
Nunzia Tirelli 2007 Dance-movement therapist (Art Therapy Italiana Bologna). 2004 CMA (Certified Movement Analysis), issued by the LIMS, New York.
From 2008 promotes, through workshops, lectures and events the principles and practice of the contemporary work of Rudolf Laban in the Italian part of Switzerland.
In 2011, she was a consultant and performer for the artwork “Laban's training area” by Miki Tallone (winner of the Swiss Art Awards 2012) for the biennial “Art en plein air” Môtiers and in 2013 at Monte Verità during the LABAN EVENT 2013 where the opera of Miki Tallone is installed permanently.
2013 Graduate Choreologist, “Special diploma in Choreological Studies” contemporary principles and practice of Rudolf Laban’s work at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London.
In 2013 she promoted and organised the historical LABAN EVENT 2013 in Monte Verità, Ascona Switzerland.
She is also a member of CID the official organisation for all form of dance in all countries of the world recognised by UNESCO.
In 2014 she wins with the project "The Dancing Drumstick and Ishtar's Journey into Hades” from the Federal Office of Culture the prize for “Cultural Dance Heritage in Switzerland”.
