This stage of work in the U.S. included several actions: a presentation of the project at Georgetown University in Washington DC, in collaboration with partner Laboratory for Global Performance & Politics, as part of “The Gathering” international meeting of artists and practitioners within CROSS CURRENTS FESTIVAL from May 4-7, 2022; and a creative residency at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York, involving Italian and U.S. artists in a phase of exchange and co-creation from May 10-15, 2022. Both stages were supported by the Italian Cultural Institutes of Washington and New York.
On May 7 at the Gonda Theatre in Washington DC, Anna Dora Dorno and Nicola Pianzola of Instabili Vaganti and Paolo Brancalion of Arboreto Teatro Dimora presented the Beyond Borders project through an excerpt from the Lockdown memory performance lecture and a video presentation of the project. In addition, over the previous 3 days they participated in a series of meetings, speed dating, and working tables with about 100 practitioners, thus increasing their skills in international art project management. In addition, a young theater and circus practitioner was given the opportunity to attend the event in presence and engage with programmers from the U.S. and from other countries.
Project presentation at The Gathering – Georgetown University – Washington, D.C.
From May 10 to 15, an artistic residency was held at La Mama Experimental theater club in New York, a historic landmark theater of the New York avant-garde and a project partner. At the spaces of Great Jones Rehearsal Studios, director Anna Dora Dorno, choreographer Elena Copelli and performer Nicola Pianzola worked with a multi-ethnic group of New York artists from various disciplines: Yuki Kawahisa (Japan), Efi Kitsanta (Greece), Antigona Gonzalez (Mexico), Jessica Bauman, Bronwyn Rucker, Adam Auslander, (USA) Cecilia Seawards (USA/Sweden), Gabriel Torres Yael Haskal (China).
Creative residency at La MaMa ETC, New York May 10 – 15, 2022
The research and co-creation work included phases of sharing physical and vocal training among the performers, viewing and developing artistic proposals on the themes investigated, video interviews with the participants, and the creation of site-specific performative actions filmed on video in the urban spaces of the Lower East side, an evocative neighborhood of the Big Apple where La MaMa is based. The main core of the research was the dialectic between Democracy and Autarchy, prompting the artists to investigate the limits and blurred boundaries of democracies in our globalized societies. The concept of boundary was therefore investigated from different points of view: the boundary between health and mental distress, starting from the analysis of an issue so present and visible in the corners of the U.S. megalopolis, populated by homeless people in serious mental conditions; the boundary between multiethnic integration and segregation, given the varied backgrounds of the participants (almost all of them recent immigrants to the States), interpersonal boundaries, depersonalization, and the sense of alienation that a megalopolis like New York can provoke.
Site-specific work session, New York May 10 – 15, 2022
The working session at La MaMa proved to be among the most useful in developing the project’s themes, leading three of the foreign participants to continue the journey in Italy, during the final stage of the 2022 edition and thus ensuring continuity for the research undertaken.