The best of European panorama, with performances of theatre, dance, nouveau cirque, acrobatics, street theatre, equestrian theatre, objects, videos and installations, is the protagonist of unique events, staged in the marvellous settings of 8 House of Savoy’s palaces and in the city of Turin, for the new edition of Teatro a Corte International Festival, from 8th to 25th July 2010.
Teatro a Corte is directed by Beppe Navello, conceived and realized by the Fondazione Teatro Piemonte Europa and supported by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, by the Regione Piemonte and – this year for the first time – by the Provincia di Torino and the Reale Mutua Assicurazioni. Teatro a Corte proves itself again as an original Festival, which combines architecture and gardens and involves the artists and the audience in a unique experience, by staging exciting shows in the context of valuables historical places – the Castello di Agliè, the ancient Agenzia di Pollenzo, the royal riding school now turned into the Centro Internazionale del Cavallo in Druento, the Villa Cavour in Santena, the Castello di Moncalieri and the Castello di Rivoli, some historical places in Turin (Piazzetta Reale, Cavallerizza Reale) and the wonderful Reggia di Venaria Reale. Besides, another important and meaningful place in the Province of Cuneo is added this year, the Castello di Casotto in Garessio.
A three-weeks Festival, with 31 companies from 8 different nations (Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Netherland, Denmark, the United Kingdom), 38 shows, 22 national premieres, 5 site specific projects, born in a strict connection with the places of the Festival, 2 creations for the Festival.
Nouveau cirque: a journey to surreal worlds
There is a fil rouge in many of the shows of Teatro a Corte 2010: the surprising, the surreal, the sense of wonder and of bewilderment, the everyday life that opens to imagination. Dance, theatre, nouveau cirque, acrobatic techniques, mime, clownerie and object theatre live together in the work of highly talented artists like Philippe Genty, who has been appreciated all over the world for 30 years. He opens the IV edition of the Festival with a national premiere, Voyageurs immobiles (July 8th and 9th), which tells the story of his adventurous trips throughout the world, among real characters and animated objects, dipped into plastic oceans and paper seas. The explosive Cirque Baroque, created in 1987 by Christian Taguet, the father of the nouveau cirque, presents on national premiere Le Cirque des Gueux (July 16th and 17th), based on John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, to which Brecht took inspiration for his The Threepenny Opera: three directors (a Japanese, a Chilean and a French) and three composers follow one another in three colourful acts, full of shopping trolleys, dancing anti-riot policemen, lion tamers dressed in spotted imitation leather and clown-acrobats.
Camille Boitel, the enfant prodige of the street theatre, who has been defined “a Bohemian Buster Keaton” by the press, brings on national premiere L’immédiat (July 14th and 15th), a story about human frailty: a chaos of brooms, lamps, ladders, doors and thousands of objects piled up, constantly falling down in a surreal comedy with amusing scenic effects.
Teatro do Mar, for the first time in Italy from Portugal, will open the Festival with Nusquam (July 8th), a multimedia reflection on contemporary society. Four seven-metres high towers, big transparent spheres, evocative video images and four actors/acrobats/dancers will create a poetic and impressive visual show. The refinement is the distinguishing mark of this show, as well as of another work from Portugal, Contigo (July 10th), by O Ultimo Momento, on national premiere too. Joao Paulo Dos Santos, a circus artist who works on verticality with the Chinese pole, meets the choreographer Rui Horta, one of the pioneers of Portuguese contemporary dance.
Les Colporteurs, masters of balance and irony, arrive in Turin from France. Les Etoiles (July 25th) consists of two short performances where funambulists deal with an odd structure, made up of innocent tubes and iron wires. The ex-stuntman Gregory Feurté walks curiously in the air too, in a show (Le temps debout – July 25th) conceived with the choreographer Kitsou Dubois, the first in the world working with the NASA. Along with Feurté, the gardens of the Reggia di Venaria will host Jouni Ihalainen, with Black Pearl (July 25th), a juggling performance with the diabolo, with music by Bach. Finally, Bruno Dizien will stage a national premiere of equestrian theatre, Töshtük ou la refonte des os (July 22th), an intimate and poetic work about Kyrgyz myths and traditions.
Belgian Showcase
The Belgian Showcase is a novelty of this year; it has been conceived in close cooperation with Wallonie-Bruxelles International in order to offer an overview of contemporary Belgian productions, and it hosts the works of eight artists from different disciplines. The set designers Stuart & Siegmann has been entrusted by the Festival with 119, a site-specific project which aims to realize the “House of Teatro a Corte” (July 8th to 25th), by restyling the PuntoFestival in a tight relationship with the identity of the Festival itself. The modern and irreverent clowns Okidok (Slips Inside – July 23th) have been given the task to animate the main square of Garessio, the new location which entered the Festival this year.
The only Flemish company is Berlin, an intriguing interdisciplinary collective which presents, on national premiere, #2 Iqaluit e #3 Bonanza (July 10th end 11th), two stages of the Holocene project, which is made up of a series of city portraits, filmed like documentaries and then turned into installations/performances. The focus is on a small town in Colorado, Bonanza, with 7 inhabitants and 5 houses, and on Iqaluit, in the Polar Circle, that the audience can observe from the interior of an igloo.
Dance plays a main role in this Showcase: Michèle Anne de Mey will be present with the national premier of her new creation, Neige (July 9th), an hypnotic and fascinating black and white work, where dancers move under a thick snowfall, on the notes of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Karine Ponties, for Dame de Pic, will be the protagonist of a focus presenting four of her works: Humus Vertebra (July 14th and 15th), a blend of dance, nouveau cirque, clownerie and mime in a fairy and surreal atmosphere, and the three one-woman shows Fidèle à l’éclair, Babil e Harvan (July 16th), all dealing with the figure of the scarecrow. Women’s universe is the core theme of SMS and love (July 24th, on national premiere), by Ayelen Parolin, a choreographer of Argentin origin who explores the relationship among three women as if they were chickens in a roost, with all their tiny behavioural rites. Josè Besprosvany, one of the main innovators in contemporary Walloon dance, brings to Italy Inventions. Recitations (July 24th, on national premiere), an extremely refined vocal and expressive experiment; he involves the extraordinary singer Bénédicte Davin, that the audience of the Festival has already known some years ago, a composer and a dancer.
More dance
Dance is present at Teatro a Corte not only in the Belgian Showcase. The highly evocative event Le Jardin des délices, by Blanca Li, that opened the last edition of the Montpellier Danse Festival, will be staged on national premiere on July 17th; it is inspired by Bosch’s homonym triptych, a touching portrait of humanity with the explosive rhythm of the cabaret, the hip hop, the flamenco and the musical, in the exceptional setting of the gardens of the Castello di Agliè. In another castle, the Castello di Rivoli, which hosts a marvellous museum of modern art, will be staged the project by Ambra Senatore and Ilaria Turba Non so fare maglie (July 10th and 11th): people will enter a platform of 10mx10m, made up of white stitch, where the images and the actions created by the audience enter the woof in real time. Maria Donata D’Urso, from Catania (but living in Paris since a long time), presents Strata Etude(July 21st), a study dealing with her work; Doriana Crema, presents Aspecifiche atipie (July 21st); both shows are created in collaboration with the Festival La Piattaforma.
From the U.K., the talented Billy Cowie brings on national premiere two 3-D dance videos: The Revery Alone (July 10th and 11th), which will be projected on the roof; and Ghosts in the machine (July 21st to 25th), his last irreverent creation made up of dance, music and speech that turns Marshall McLuhan into a western movies actor.
Prose Theatre
Italy meets France in Teatro a Corte, in a strong dialogue among cultures, artists and directors which is well represented in the plays. On national premiere, Beppe Navello will direct Dette d’amour (July 15th and 16th), a play by Eugène Durif which takes inspiration from Carlo Goldoni’s Il burbero benefico, with a French-Italian company. Flavio Polizzy is the protagonist, as well as the translator from French, of Settembre ( July 18th) by Philippe Malone; the play, directed by Michel Simonot, is a coming-of-age story about a boy in a violent context. Elio Germano and Teho Teardo take inspiration from the French genius of Céline, for an uncommon version of Journey to the End of the Night (July 24th, on national premiere). Bruno Gambarotta and the Sorelle Suburbe will lead the audience into the Storia d’Italia in 150 date (July 18th), conceived by Fruttero and Gramellini. On the last day of the Festival (July 25th), Flavia Mastrella and Antonio Rezza will present Da Pitecus a Io, an astonishing journey into their poetic conception, at the Court of Honour of the Reggia di Venaria.
Finally, within the European programme for cross-border cooperation Alcotra two studies will be presented, which are the result of two laboratories: the first one is led by Eugenio Allegri and deals with the Commedia dell’Arte (July 17th); the second one, led by Jean-Claude Penchenat (July 22nd), is about theatre costumes.
The site specific projects
Realizing in situ projects, purpose-made for specific settings, is a “core-business” of Teatro a Corte. The installation 119, by Stuart & Siegmann, and Non so fare maglie by Ambra Senatore and Ilaria Turba are both committed to this goal. But they are not the only ones: there are the installation Come una barca nel bosco, by the Turin company Officina dello Spettacolo, and Tomorrow everything will be different: edition Torino(July 12th to 17th), an odd work by the Danish hello!earth which lead the audience around the city of Turin by using SMS, involving them in the creation of an unclassifiable “participatory work of art”, between installation and environment. The famous Groupe F, specialist in fireworks and pyrotechnic shows, present a site specific work too (July 25th), for the grand final of the Festival: an event which mixes fire and water in the fish pond of the Reggia di Venaria.