Messina: From 8 to 14 July the village of Castroreale becomes the stage of "InCastro Festival", the event that combines dance, music and landscape

Messina: From 8 to 14 July the village of Castroreale becomes the stage of "InCastro Festival", the event that combines dance, music and landscape.

The program includes two national premieres, workshops with the participation of important exponents of contemporary dance at an international level and special site-specific projects designed specifically for the Festival.

The 22 June, village of Castroreale (Messina), will be the stage of the fifth edition of InCastro Festival, scheduled from 8 to 14 July.

The multidisciplinary Festival, which combines dance, music and landscape, with the artistic direction of Giorgia Di Giovanni and Pierfrancesco Mucari and the organizational direction of Danila Blasi, supported by the Ministry of Culture, Municipality of Castroreale and Union of Municipalities - Valle del Patri.

The theme of the 2023 edition is the Skill of Living, confirming the event's vocation for widespread involvement of this village and its community.

Two national premieres are scheduled: Sunday 9 July at 20.30 pm with Tre Stanze by Scenario Pubblico Compagnia Zappalà, on stage in Piazza delle Aquile and Tuesday 11 July, at 19.30 pm, in Piazza della Candelora with Two out of three by Zerogrammi.

Workshops and residencies are also planned, with the participation of important exponents of contemporary dance at an international level and some special site-specific projects designed specifically for InCastro: Humus Saliens, Listening to living, Sedentario, In-Itinere and Sullivan- Primostudio. Among the names of the guests Virgilio Sieni, Manfredi Perego, Giuseppe Muscarello, Balletto Civile, MK.

The program of the Festival days:

To inaugurate the InCastro Festival, Saturday 8 July at gold 17.00 pm will be the multimedia performance Giulio by and with Giuseppe Muscarello, a PinDoc production, hosted in the Torre Federico II: in a combination of literature, movement and visual art the narrative flows through a chronological succession of events and events set inside the house. The show will be repeated at 17pm, 45pm and 18pm.

At 20.00 pm and 21.30 pm the Church of SS. Salvatore will host Virgilio Sieni's Blind Dance. Sieni himself and the blind dancer Giuseppe Comuniello are the protagonists of a duet on tactility that transforms the body into an inexhaustible atlas of democratic places. The performance, with electronic music performed live by Spartaco Cortesi, is based on the haptic space between the two performers and the energy that is created around them through movements.

On Sunday 9 July at 20.30 pm Piazza delle Aquile will host Amelia, a Zerogrammi production, by and with Priscilla Pizziol and Edoardo Sgambato.
Amelia is a eulogy to fragility, an invitation to immerse yourself in the dimension of memory and let yourself be crossed by the sense of emptiness that comes from its loss. Two bodies inhabit a single chair, sharing their solitude by recalling past experiences, worlds and times. The (non)story continues in confused fragments, a constant flow of memories and non-memories.

Following, at 21.30 pm, the premiere of Tre Stanze by and with Maud de la Purification and live music performed by Cristiano Calcagnile, Gianni Mimmo and Pierfrancesco Mucari (Produzione Scenario Pubblico/ Compagnia Zappalà Danza) is scheduled. The show is characterized by three moments:
Impregnation. Entering a place, an idea, frequenting a contradiction.
An absorption process.
Obsession. The closed alley, dead row. The frequenting of the limit because "I don't know what I've done, I don't do what I have."
Hallucination. Transcend the limit, don't break it. The sublimation of the idea is art.

On Monday 10 July at 19.00 pm Piazza Pertini will host Humus Saliens (IterCulture production), a special site-specific project created for InCastro Festival. The performance by Erin B. Mee, teacher at the Tisch School, is a training course with young choreographers selected by Viagrande Studios.

Also in the location of Piazza Pertini, at 20.30 pm Paesaggio d'interni is scheduled, a production by Balletto Civile, by Michela Lucenti, with Emanuela Serra, Alessandro Pallecchi, Giulia Spattini and Francesco Gabrielli.
In this site specific performance the stage is the street, the scene is an interior, a table and two chairs, like an island to land on. Bodies compared in rhythmic dance scores. A kaleidoscope of images that inspire Balletto Civile to investigate the emotional relationship between men and women.

Below is information on the residency, on the workshops scheduled in various outdoor locations in Castroreale (for information and registration info.incastrofestival@gmail.com and +39 349 838 8723 +39 347 104 4290):

“IN-ITINERE” is scheduled from 11 to 14 July, the creative artistic residency conducted by Emanuela Serra and Alessandro Pallecchi, in which 11 dancers, professional actors and young dancers from the area take part. A training and creative path, with the aim of giving priority to physical urgency by reawakening the intelligence of listening to find a clear stage presence and stimulate our physical imagination. The creative process will be structured with the aim of providing participants with a common language to come into contact with the creative methodology of Balletto Civile.
The result of the residency will be open to the public through a traveling performance created ad-hoc in a journey through the places of Castroreale, with the intervention of the Historic Musical Band M° Settimo Sardo.

The workshop activities will start on Saturday 8th (15pm-30pm) and Sunday 17th July (30am-9am), with “Mi InCastro”, which includes itinerant urban dance activities curated by Danilo Smedile: through the exploration of territory and movement, the laboratory wants to offer the opportunity to experiment and deepen the contamination between body, dance, architecture and landscape. Develop the ability to act in different contexts and places, to open new channels useful for the relationship with space, time and other bodies.

“Dimora” by Mariana Cerino Calazans is scheduled for Sunday 9 July from 15.30pm to 17.30pm: a workshop open to all focused on the figure of Penelope – the mythical queen of Ithaca – and her long wait. As a symbol of eternal loyalty and constancy, Penelope becomes the starting point to offer the participants a dilated time to observe, distract themselves, concentrate and collectively establish a shared practice, a ritual of the act of waiting.
The “Linguaggio MoDem” workshop will take place on Monday 10 July, from 9 to 30, a project by Roberto Zappalà held by Maud de la Purification, dancer and assistant of Compagnia Zappalà Danza.
The work inspiration starts from three texts written by the same choreographer "Corpo devoto", "Corpo ethico" and "Corpo instintivo", now collected in a single text "Omnia Corpora" in which Roberto Zappalà explains considerations and reflections in relation to his approach to choreography. The more physical section of the workshop held by Maud de la Purification consists of strengthening the body and mind through intense muscular work.

From 15.00pm to 18.00pm Giorgia Gasparetto and Vitus Denifl will be the protagonists of the workshop sharing the creative process of "Two out of three". An opportunity to open up research and deepen the study of the concepts of integration, of the relationship between body and space/environment, and between gesture and sound. We will explore the worlds of dance, movement and live music, investigating their links through games that accompanied our creation.

The “Permeabile” workshop conducted by the Macula Collective (Edoardo Sgambato and Priscilla Pizziol) will take place on Tuesday 11 July from 15pm to 00pm. This activity is aimed at all those who wish to delve deeper into those tools that allow our body to access a state of perceptive openness. A physical-anatomical exploration inspired by the study of Contact Improvisation, the Feldenkrais method, as well as partnering and floorwork will be guided.

On Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 July from 9:00 to 11:00 "Invasione Danzata" will take place, a practical meeting with Balletto Civile, led by Emanuela Serra and Alessandro Pallecchi: an open-air laboratory in which the danced action is experimented in a site-specific situation. Through the study of simple elements (impulse/reaction, balancing of space, synchronized and rhythmic score, use of levels) a common language will be developed through building encounters between bodies that are as dense and authentic as possible. Participants in the workshop will be able to follow as listeners the creation of the IN-ITINERE performance which will be constructed in the following days.

Finally, on Wednesday 12th and Thursday 13th July from 15.00pm to 17.30pm and Friday 14th July from 9.30am to 11.30am Manfredi Perego and Chiara Montalbani will lead "Metamorphosis Technique", a container of exercises where the teachings acquired over the years come together, their re- codification where necessary and the development of new concepts applicable to the art of dance. These exercises include studies of contemporary technique, movement research, work with objects, improvisation technique.