Soaring like flocks of birds

The dance section of this year's Ravenna Festival, which kicks off on 1 June at the Mercato Coperto with the choreographic installation goldroom by the Italian company Nanou, is under the sign of phantasmagoria. The second chapter of the Overlook Hotel cycle, which investigates the relationship between body, image and memory drawing inspiration from Stanley Kubrick's film Shining , goldroom is a multimedia project by Marco Valerio Amico and Rhuena Bracci with which the artists explore the perception of time as an unstable matter. After redrum (Ubu Award 2024 as best dance performance), which evoked one of the most impressive visions of little Danny, this new choreographic device takes us into the unsettling party room of Shining, where six dancers inhabit the space multiplied through a video camera and delay system. The nanou challenge the spectators' perception by creating a dreamlike and perturbing dimension in which ghosts materialise, disturbing presences, visual memories that "haunt the scene", amidst Kubrickian citations and references to Bacon's painting, as well as to the cinema of Lynch and Cronenberg.

The spectator's eye will certainly also be caught by Murmuration Level 2 (on 12 June at the Pala De André), a spectacular choreography by French artist Sadeck Berrabah, whose popularity has grown internationally since his collaboration with Shakira and the choreography of the ceremonies of the Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Inspired by the hypnotic figurations of flocks of birds in flight, in Murmuration Level 2 Berrabah leads thirty performers in a geometric dance of maniacal precision, in which shapes and rhythms compose and decompose before our eyes in an uninterrupted flow, synchronised with the techno sounds of TRex.

Equally spectacular promises to be, on 8 July at the Teatro Alighieri, The infinite approach by Yoann Bourgeois, the French artist who challenges the force of gravity in imaginative performances where theatre and acrobatics come together to create a suspended and imaginative dimension: chairs, ladders, objects and balancing bodies hold us in suspense, reminding us that everything is precarious and at the same time nothing is impossible. Bourgeois' shows captivate by their paradoxical dimension but also develop a philosophical reflection on time and movement: "For over a decade," the artist explains, "my work has focused on a fundamental act: the attempt to approach a point of suspension. Each 'approach' is an attempt to capture a moment of absolute equilibrium, a fleeting eclipse of time".

On 10 July the acclaimed Spanish dancer Sergio Bernal will return to Ravenna with his company to propose three choreographies in which flamenco dialogues with the forms of neoclassical ballet. The first two will offer an opportunity to rediscover the Ecuadorian choreographer Rafael Aguilar, who died in 1995: the first is entitled Rango and is inspired by The House of Bernarda Alba by Federico García Lorca, which aroused the admiration of Antonio Gades in the 1960s, so much so that he wanted to play the title role; the second is a flamboyant version of Ravel's Boléro , which has established itself on the international stage as one of the best ever made. Completing the triptych is a Suite flamenca in which bailaor Bernal dialogues with his musicians in an irresistible triumph of rhythm and duende.

At the heart of this varied programme, on 25 June at the Pala De André, there will be a special evening entitled Stars of today meet the stars of tomorrow. It is the final Gala of the international master Youth America Grand Prix in New York, which with a varied line-up of choreographic compositions is proposed as an ideal passing of the baton between the international stars Maria Khoreva of the Mariinsky, Emma Von Enck of the New York City Ballet, Polina Semionova of the Staatsballett Berlin, Adij Cissoko of the Alonzo King Lines Ballet and the young students selected during the master classes in Ravenna.