With a press conference, the 42nd Oriente Occidente Dance Festival has been presented. The Festival will be in Rovereto from 3rd to 10th September and its title is Mediterraneans.
Mediterranean means "the sea between the lands." Precisely, the sea is surrounded by 46 thousand kilometres of coastline between southern Europe, northwest Asia and northern Africa, and the lands inhabited by 450 million people, who share the view of the sea and some distant origins. A multitude of peoples, customs, cultures, seas.
Precarious geostrategic balances have transformed the Mediterranean from a stormy sea into a space that has far outstripped its natural borders. Therefore, desiring to tell its story at the 42nd edition of Oriente Occidente Dance Festival, we would like to rename this "mare nostrum", this sea of ours, and call it Mediterraneans, in the plural, to highlight its fragmentation, its nature as a melting pot of diversity. Mediterraneans shifts the focus from the sea between the lands to as many of those lands as possible, as places where different people can come together and exchange ideas, an open basin where countless roads cross and interweave.
Mediterraneans is the world in disarray, the world of migrants and migration, a place where cultures can speak to each other, but also where civilisations can clash. Mediterraneans is about belonging, identity, community and relationships. Mediterraneans is a set of different narratives that can break down and dismantle a univocal universal thought to build a multiplicity of voices.
Without betraying our history and identity, we consistently turn the spotlight onto the language of dance, which by its very nature can overcome borders and language barriers, this year adding music as well, which shares the same features as dance.
Our endeavour is to translate the melting pot of Mediterraneans through performances that embrace different cultural and geographical backgrounds, blending the influences of diverse artistic styles and disciplines, resulting in innovative forms of experimentation.
To achieve this, we have based the programme of the event on three underlying narrative themes that can also help us find a meaning in the performances: telling myths, listening to voices, charting new routes.
So, once again, we hit the road, or rather take to the sea, without entirely abandoning the nomadic spirit that accompanied us in these years.
We invite you to embark on this adventure together, to let ourselves be inspired by the myths recounted by Mourad Merzouki, Rafaela Carrasco, Roberto Zappalร , Lia Rodrigues and Kuik Swee Boon. Like Odysseus, we will follow new paths blazed by artists who talk to us about innovation and the avant-garde. And, finally, from time to time, we will let ourselves be distracted by the singing of the sirens, who will play Armenian, African, Greek and Salento instruments for us.
Within and beyond our expectations, we will once again be together. Which, after all, is what the beauty of seafaring is all about, finding ourselves, at times, at the mercy of the winds.
Discover the program!