A heartfelt tribute to the great Butoh teacher who died in November 2020 and who last performed on stage and held one of his workshops at Danae Festival in 2019, exactly a year before his death. An eclectic figure, he was also an actor and explored many arts including writing, cinema and, of course, dance.

Three days of workshops, video projections, sharing of thoughts and performances by Italian and international artists who studied and/or worked with him, who were close to him, many of whom have been part of Danae Festival’s artistic community over the years: the choreographer, writer and yoga teacher Francesca Proia, who in her career worked with Romeo Castellucci, Monica Francia, Masaki Iwana, Ermanna Montanari, Silvia Rampelli; the dancer, performer and educator Cristina Negro, who studied with Carolyn Carlson, Teri Weikel, Dominique Dupuy, Masaki Iwana; the choreographer Silvia Rampelli, director of the independent performing research project Habillé d’eau, whose work Euphoria was awarded the 2018 Premio Ubu for best dance play; the dancer and choreographer Alessandra Cristiani, who has been studying theory and practice of Ankoku Buto for over twenty years, and whose choreographic works involve a dialogue with other disciplines; the dancer/performer and musician Moeno Wakamatsu, who studied at the Merce Cunningham School and the Feldenkrais method in New York, wife of Masaki Iwana and keeper of his artistic legacy; the two great sound experimenters Michel Doneda, whose sonic and life practices rely so much on improvisation as to make him one of its most original interpreters on a world scale – he worked with Elvin Jones, John Zorn, Fred Frith, Eliot Sharp, Daunik Lazro, Martine Alterburger, Barre Phillips, Tetsu Saitoh, Kazue Sawai, Fred Van Hove, Phil Wachsmann –, and Lê Quan Ninh, a percussionist with a classical education from the Versailles Conservatory and an enthusiast of free improvisation – he collaborated in dance and improvisation with Fine Kwiatkowski, Michel Raji, Masaki Iwana, Moeno Wakamatzu, Patricya Kuypers, among others. The project benefits from the valuable devising work by Cristina Negro, who prompted us to give shape to a desire of hers that was also ours.

6.30pm
Melancholia
the last film/documentary by Masaki Iwana
duration: 5 minutes

Masaki’s Anthology 1998-1994
video collage of dances performed by Masaki Iwana
made by Moeno Wakamatsu
duration: 30 minutes

8pm
Lê Quan Ninh e Michel Doneda (Francia)
Aplomb
concert
duration: 30 minutes

8.30pm
Francesca Proia
The newborn touch
video by Francesca Proia and Danilo Conti
duration: 10 minutes
“Dance is a state of rapture that allows to linger between perception and invisibility.
I owe much to butoh dance, and I am also fond of it: founding memories of a poetic education.
The legacy I got from butoh is to think any new creations as the genesis of an absolute beginning, washed ashore by some sort of nostalgia”.
(Francesca Proia)

8.45pm
Cristina Negro e Michel Doneda
La rose habite notre cœur comme une ortie
(Salah Stétié)
concert for saxophones and dance
by and with Michel Doneda e Cristina Negro
duration: 25 minutes
A radical improvisation project where the instrument is pushed to its limits and sound depth and silence are fathomed in a path that goes through body, gestures, breath, movement, each time in a relationship with a specific spatial context. A research on the purity of sound in the dimension of time. The two artists have been working together for over ten years both in France and Italy.

9.10pm
Alessandra Cristiani
Entrana (excerpt)
project and dance Alessandra Cristiani
music Rachel’s
durata: 15 minuti
“To pause and to listen. To dialogue with silence. An intimacy. To glide within one’s body. To give in to an uncomfortable nature. Tamely, while perceiving an inside. The beginning of a journey”.
(Alessandra Cristiani)