Biennale College Danza: the new calls are open until 21 March

The second edition of Biennale College Danza under the direction of Wayne McGregor is seeking the “visionaries of tomorrow”. Starting today Monday February 21^st on the website of La Biennale di Venezia – www.labiennale.org – and through Monday March 21^st, two new calls are open for the selection respectively of 16 dancers between the ages of 18 and 30, and 2 choreographers ages 18 and over, from all around the world.

Biennale College Danza will conclude, at the end of three-month programme, with the presentation on the stages of the 16^th International Festival of Contemporary Dance (22 > 31 July), of:

• the new creation developed exclusively by Saburo Teshigawara, the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement 2022, for the group of dancers and choreographers, on commission by La Biennale di Venezia.
• the staging of a Merce Cunningham Event, with mentors Daniel Squire, who has staged many of his works, and Jeannie Steele, who was with the company for sixteen years as a dancer and rehearsal assistant.
• two short original compositions created by the 2 choreographers in collaboration with the 16 dancers, mentored by the director Wayne McGregor.

Structured as an intensive theoretical and practical three-month programme (May 9^th > July 31^st), Biennale College Danza, as conceived by Wayne McGregor, aims to broaden the skills, capacities, knowledge and awareness of the 18 young artists who will be selected, providing them the tools they need to become well-rounded professionals. The young artists will work side by side with leading masters, choreographers, teachers and instructors, as well as important market professionals, for an integrated global vision of the dancer/choreographer today.

Along with preliminary session held by Wayne McGregor on Physical Thinking, which has always been the subject of his research on the generation of dance material and choreographic composition, Biennale College will introduce a new session this year dedicated to the interaction between dance and new technologies, giving dancers and choreographers the opportunity to experiment with the generative applications of artificial intelligence through the use of Living Archive, the choreographic composition tool developed in the collaboration between Google and McGregor. Starting with the dancers themselves, and borrowing from McGregor’s repertoire, the Living Archive exploits machine learning to generate new movements in the dancer’s style, multiplying the potential of the choreographic process.

The Biennale College programme also includes daily sessions on classical and contemporary dance technique, workshops centred on the Cunningham repertoire, improvisation practices, exploration of personal creativity, individual mentoring as well as lectures and seminars focused on the more practical aspects of professional life. A programme largely shared by the dancers and choreographers, with specific sections envisioned for each of the two categories.

During the Festival, finally, the 18 participants in the College will be invited to attend all the activities in the programme: performances, meetings, installations, lectures.

The official text of the calls for Biennale College Danza 2022 complete with benefits and concessions (travel, lodging, transport, emoluments) are available at www.labiennale.org/en/biennale-college.

Starting this year, Biennale College is part of the project to develop and reinforce the activities of La Biennale di Venezia, with the purpose of creating a permanent centre of national and international excellence. As such, the Biennale College comes under the “Strategic Investment Plan for Cultural Heritage Sites, Buildings and Natural Areas” in the National Plan for Investments Complementary to the National Plan for Recovery and Resilience.