PARMA – A Festival of dance and performing arts in the city’s public spaces is the first edition of Parma Moving Festival entitled Solo cose belle (Only Beautiful Things), which will take place in Parma from 19 to 23 September, under the artistic direction of Daniele Albanese, promoted by Europa Teatri, realised with the contribution of the Municipality of Parma and Fondazione Cariparma, in collaboration with the Library System of the Municipality of Parma and the Museum of Chinese Art and Ethnography.Performances, videos, site-specific creations, talks, and conversations make up the programme of the Festival, which sees the presence of national and international guests with creations disseminated in squares and open-air venues, libraries, and in the spaces of Museo Cinese (the Chinese Museum) and Teatro Europa, so that the language of dance may become an integral part of community life.
Although dance is a universal language, it often runs the risk, in its paths, directions and aesthetic, of being far from common feeling. This first edition of the Festival, without losing sight of the complexity and depth of each artistic creation, wants precisely to seek new ways and places to convey its artistic message, rethinking and remixing the modes of fruition and creating, albeit in different spheres, a city cultural network of synergies and collaborations.

<p style=”margin-bottom: 50px;”>The programming sees a stimulating confrontation between generations, from the very young Compagnia Parini Secondo, Edoardo Sgambato and Ida Malfatti to historical figures of international dance such as Eva Karczag and Adriana Borriello, to prominent personalities of the city such as Lucia Perego, to the now consolidated formations of Italian dance grupponanou, Manfredi Perego and Chiara Montalbani. Accompanying the performances are choreographic video works by Dehors/Audela, Conrad Veit e Charlotte Maria Kätzl, grupponanou e Patric Chiha. Two scholars will accompany the festival: Maurizio Zanardi and Alessandro Pontremoli, great connoisseurs of dance and attentive observers of the Italian theatre scene.</p>

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The first appointment of the Festival is Tuesday 19 September in Piazza Barricate/Chiesa dell’Annunziata (5.00 p.m.) and in Piazza Garibaldi (7.00 p.m.) with the Compagnia Parini Secondo presenting Speeed with Sissj Bassani, Camilla Neri, Martina Piazzi, Francesca Pizzagalli, realised in collaboration with La Boutique dell’Autoradio, Finizio Power Team, Audiogamma Hi-Fi Trento with the support of Mastronauta Omegna, Comune di Verbania, Fondazione Comunitaria VCO, Nexus Factory Bologna.
A project selected for the Young Author’s Dance Showcase 2022 and supported by Dancescapes promoted by Danza Urbana, Speeed is a choreographic and musical project inspired by the Para Para and Eurobeat phenomenon, which spread in the 1990s in Tokyo clubs.
Following this, at 8 p.m., the film Sogno più non ricordo I dream no more I remember (12′, 2023) by Dehors/Audela, editing by Salvatore Insana, with Elisa Turco Liveri, music by Silvia Cignoli. The film – the title is a homage to the poetry of Lorenzo Calogero – is a fragment of a larger project linked to the exploration and audiovisual crossing of Aspromonte, a liminal rite of a mystical nature, a magical and archaic place.
This will be followed, in collaboration with the BIG Festival in Bari, by the screening of Blastogenese ‘, conception, screenplay and direction by Conrad Veit and Charlotte Maria Kätzl, who also star together with Juraj Černák, production Conrad Veit Film Funding Stiftung Braunschweigischer Kulturbesitz and Landeshauptstadt Hannover Kulturbüro (Germany, 26’39”, 2020). In the black-and-white film, the two artists stage an animal documentary set in stone quarries in which hybrid creatures deconstruct the boundaries between humans and animals, between masculinity and femininity. A journey to the dawn of silent cinema that reveals itself to be a utopian vision in which all life forms are equal.
At 9 p.m. Ruggine (Rust), choreography/dance by Manfredi Perego, original music by Paolo Codognola, a work produced by Tirdanza, with the co-production of Milanoltre Festival, in collaboration with Fondazione Teatro Due, Europa Teatri. Ruggine is a reflection on the product of the antagonism between darkness and light in man, a dramaturgical thought that deals with darkness, restlessness, caprice, suffering, observing without judgement these emotions and the actions they provoke.

On Wednesday 20 September, from 6 p.m., at Biblioteca di Alice in the Parco Ducale, Lucia Perego presents Filo conduttore: il respiro (The thread: the breath), an original site-specific performative action in which the thread is precisely the breath, which insinuates itself, continuous and silent, into every gesture and movement danced, unheard, motor of unusual rhythms, constant companion, bearer of life. A dancing breath as the thread of a continuous, mysterious creative act that for the dancer becomes indistinguishable from everyday life.
Another unpublished site-specific performative action is Geometrie liquide with Daniele Albanese, Chiara Montalbani and Manfredi Perego, three choreographers and dancers from Parma, whose paths have intertwined several times over the last ten years and who find themselves exploring the possibilities of the body in an unprecedented choreographic game.
Between the geometries of space and the sensations coming from an urban and natural location such as the Parco Ducale, the performance will reinvent new ways of encountering space and the public.
At 8.30 p.m. at the Museo Cinese there will be the meeting Spazio museale e live performance ( with Chiara Allegri, director of the Museo d’Arte Cinese ed Etnografico di Parma, followed by Melancolia a project by and with Edoardo Sgambato, with the support of Incubatore per futur* coreograf* CIMD. On stage, a lonely body, buried by over a thousand white cardboard boxes, crawls out of the rubble of its thought, moves navigating in the asymmetry between action and reflection, inhabiting that distance that is the cause of a strong sense of disquiet.

Staging of an artistic practice, performative action, theoretical lesson, public lecture are some of the nuclei from which the lecture La conoscenza della non conoscenza (The knowledge of non-knowledge) conceived by dancer, choreographer and pedagogue Adriana Borriello, who will present, together with Donatella Morrone, on Thursday 21 September, at 8.30 p.m., at Biblioteca Civica, takes its cue. The creation aims to accompany the spectator through the meshes that make up the fundamental principles of a choreographic thought and a creative-pedagogical method elaborated over time and multiple professional experiences.

This will be followed by Poesia Spaziale – talk by philosopher Maurizio Zanardi, one of the founders of the Cronopio publishing house and author of several essays on theatre and dance, with the involvement of Adriana Borriello.

On Friday 22 September, from 5 p.m., the Biblioteca Malerba will host Una certa idea di casa, a lecture/performance and interaction with the public with Daniele Albanese. Through simple actions shared with the audience and reflections, spoken and danced, the aim is to create a common space to ask questions and open new points of view. An action that takes place in the new Malerba Library, which symbolically is a ‘home’ of our culture and which, at the end of the performance, will be presented by the staff in its spaces and activities.
At Teatro Europa at 9 p.m. grupponanou presents Arsura, a project, choreography and scenes by Marco Valerio Amico, Rhuena Bracci, production Nanou Cultural Association, Rosa Shocking/Festival Tendance, support E Production. Arsura is a thirst generated by emptiness, absence, the resistance of a body alone in a vast space. It is a work about time and lack. A primordial state, a faithful mirror of the group’s research where light, space, disregard of time, bestiality, are tools with which to build and sculpt the dwelling of a being.
Before and after the performance, at 8 p.m. and 9.40 p.m., the Spazio Piccolo of the Teatro Europa will show on loop the videos of grupponanou Camera 208 and Baby Doe by Claudio Martinez, and Paradiso by Giulio Boato.

On Saturday 23 September, at 4 p.m., in Piazza Ghiaia the dancer and choreographer Ida Malfatti presents INFESTA in which she performs, together with Zoe Francia Lamattina and Francesca Dibiase, with the support of Incubatore per futur* coreograf* C.I.M.D. and Live Arts Cultures. INFESTA is a lump of bodies that goes nowhere and yet continues to move, a performative action for spaces that are not cleaned up, not neutral, not destined, a machine that digests the perceptual-affective atmospheres it passes through, a living mechanism that interlocks, questions, orients itself, repeats itself, falls.
At Biblioteca Pavese at 6 p.m. Eva Karczag presents Another Story. Un’altra storia a site-specific creation of 5 scores, 5 states, 5 journeys. As the performance happens and the journey proceeds, unexpected openings are revealed and original paths are followed; each performance and each new reorganisation of it becomes a new telling of the story. An independent artist who has worked with leading experimental dance groups (including the Trisha Brown Dance Company), Eva Karczag practices, teaches and supports exploratory methods of dance creation; her collaborations extend to writing, video, music and visual art.
This will be followed by the talk Choreographing Reality with Alessandro Pontremoli, Professor of Performing Arts at the University of Turin, where he coordinates the Performing Arts and Music Curriculum of the Doctorate in Humanities. In this talk he will outline the new instances of dance in the present in relation to the complexity of reality and the multiple and fluid approaches to the choreographic creative process.
At 9 p.m. the documentary film Si c’etait de l’amour – If it were love by Patric Chiha, an Austrian director of Hungarian and Lebanese origin, will be shown. Fifteen young dancers from different backgrounds and horizons are on tour with Gisèle Vienne’s epic dance work Crowd on the 1990s rave scene. A disturbing journey that explores our nights, our parties, our loves.</div>