Venice's enchanting waterways have lately given rise to political discord, such as on June 4, when mayor Giorgio Orsoni and more than 30 fellow government officials were charged with corruption related to a flood-control project. But the converging Po and Piave rivers will soon revert to a more customary role - acting as a fluid crossroads for a vanguard of cutting-edge art.
Starting on Thursday, it is dance. The citywide 9th International Festival of Contemporary Dance is part of the performance arm of one of the world's oldest contemporary art exhibitions, the Venice Biennale. Running concurrent to the Biennale's 14th International Architecture Exhibition, dance of all varieties will tumble forth over 10 days at the city's many squares, theatres and performance spaces. The Corderie dell'Arsenale will host ongoing dance activities, with six stages specially set up for the events.
Curator Virgilio Sieni, a choreographer and a leading figure in Italian contemporary dance, has assembled an impressive roster of 30 choreographers and dance companies for the festival's 42 productions, of which 28 are premieres. Many participants are Italian, but guest artists will pile into the City of Water from Japan, France, Belgium, Spain, Norway, Israel and the US.
The dawn-till-late-night throng of dance concerts will cohere, or not, under the festival's aspirational title, Mondo Novo ("New World"), further delineated by the tagline, "Gesture, Place, Community".
"The theme is born of the possibility of renewal of community through the body itself, through its ability to move, practise and observe," says Sieni in an e-mail.
Stefano Tomassini, a University of Lugano dance historian who assisted Sieni in the festival's staging, explains: "We are at the end of a story in dance. We need a new story. We have to think not about the show, not about the aesthetic, but about how dance and the body can promote new community. When we say 'contemporary dance,' we don't consider what is dance. We care about what is contemporary." In Sieni's practice, that means a return to a basic gestural language that all human beings share. It's a stripping of artifice and ornamentation to reveal dance's most human and universal components.
This choreography can be beautiful, moving; it also offers the possibility of community rebirth, the festival's theme.