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PRESS RELEASE #15 – 2017
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Lenz Foundation presents Nature Gods Theatres – The Festival is back twice, starting in June with Les Italiens

Nature Gods Theatres, directed by Maria Federica Maestri and Francesco Pititto, reaches the twenty-second edition and expands its horizon with a summer season dedicated to the most inspiring names of Italian artistic research, and a fall edition of international breadth. Theatre, music, dance, video and performance, also resulting from prestigious residencies of international artists, staged at Lenz Theatre and other historical and monumental venues in Parma. Starting from June 20.

The historic Performing Arts International Festival, Nature Gods Theatres is back and expanded in two structured sections: the first at the opening of the summer season, from June 20 to July 1 and the second at the usual fall calendar date from November 18 to 25.
Nature Gods Theatres completes the project dedicated to visual artist Richard Serra. Doors, Blind Spot, and Wake are the conceptual themes of the three-year period 2015-2017, whose field of research focuses on the macro-theme of Matter of Time in the languages of contemporary creation.

Wake is the evocation of the 2017 edition: «Only the desert leaves lasting wakes, traces visible until the next strong wind blows, until the next sand storm» the artistic directors suggest «In physics, wake is the turbulence created in a fluid by a moving object that runs through it. The microscopic particles of a fluid create a minuscule net of threads, which moves at slower speed, therefore lags behind, creating small vortexes, and then disappears. In the desert, the sand, heavier than the fluid, is there to mark that passage, drawing it and preserving it until it can hold it. The work of the artist, like a moving body, leaves behind wakes with different persistence: some have short life, other longer, other last forever. The wake marks the time, the duration of the work of art, its power as it moves through space, the strength of its trail. The issue of the “space-time field” has been the recurring theme of our three-year long research on Richard Serra’s work/exploration, where the materials, installations and visual components have been key elements of the dramaturgy, the body of the actor, the dramatization of the imagery, and the audience experience. Richard Serra’s The Matter of Time allowed us to create a project that already had its own “material weight” and would not just be of moving thoughts. As for Wake, we think of a sand desert that can mark the various passages, the trails of the creative presence of guest artists and ours. There will be different spaces to move through, between historical monuments and city streets, theater house and contemporary museum, each transformed in its own creative desert, on which to engrave wakes of thoughts and artistic matter. Until the next storm».

Twenty-two years of history. Thirteen artistic subjects in the schedule: in the summer section Lenz Foundation, Teatro delle Moire + Alessandro Bedosti, MK, Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi, Opera-Vincenzo Schino, DOM-, Monica Bianchi and Tihana Maravic; in the fall Tim Spooner (UK), Carla Bozulich (USA), Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner (UK), Fiorella Iacono (Italy), Lenz Foundaton (Italy) ), Adrian Engelbrecht (Italy), ), Andrew Azzali (Italy) and Monica Bianchi (Italy). Thirteen performances with twenty-six shows – of which six are world premiers. Two international artists in-residence: Robin Rimbaud e Tim Spooner. One Italian residency: Monica Bianchi. Many venues: The Crossing of the former Old Hospital, Lenz Theater, Pilotta Museum and various locations spread around the city.

Nature Gods Theatres opens June 20 marking the beginning of Lenz Foundation two-year impressive project dedicated to the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, divided into three site-specific music and performance events inspired by Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, staged in three significant locations in the city of Parma: the Waste-to-energy plant (2018), the Crossing of the former Old Hospital – the Record Office and the North Bridge:

«From empty to full, from exclusion to true participation of the citizens in their cultural and urban heritage, new geography and recovery of sustainable beauty, bridge among bridges, watery thoughts that flows on the dry bed of the stream under the bridge which joins nothing, art/real action in the theater that aspire to be theater, before the last wall, before the “end of works», Francesco Pititto and Maria Federica Masters say «To propose a thorough discussion on architecture, the community and culture by means of a theatrical study and site-specific installation performances, means to link in ideas two essential periods of the history of Parma. Researching the origin and projecting it in the present is an incitement to be participant of a great tradition, of a present time that can stand up to its origin. Monumental building run through monumental works of literature, theater, music in the most advanced art forms. Dante’s great poetic monument bounces the human and artistic condition of the sensible actors of Lenz Foundation to places of painful constraint, of suspended theater, of illusion».

«The entire structure of the Old Hospital was designed around the Greek cross large Crossing, surmounted by a dome, as so many similar fifteen-century structures» explains Maria Federica Maestri, in charge of the site-specific installation, the plastic elements, costumes and direction «And it is indeed in this space, where for centuries Shelter and Care have returned dignity to the poor and the foundlings, that the nature of the vernacular actor, with his knowledge and his own language, will give back voice and meaning to those spaces in the Crossing that are now empty and deprived of purpose».

Francesco Pititto, curator of dramaturgy and dramatization of the images for Purgatory, adds: «The Penitents of this Purgatory/Hospital will regurgitate fragments of their “language of the middle” from the great mouths of the imposing naves, from the audience area/crossing, deprived of any furnishing, rhythms and folk songs will resound from the vaults and arches, stripped of the ancient functions, vernacular language will echo new Dantesque pains and suffering. Many contemporary Daniel Arnaut – the best of the troubadour poets among the lustful of the twenty-sixth chant – many purging poets searching for the prayer that can lead them to the top of the mountain, up to Earthly Paradise. Midway between the poetry of the language in Hell – violent, tragic, damned – and the sublime power of the choral voice of the sacred paradise, the language of real life, native and raw vernacular language throws back at us, straight and heavy, the truth of the human condition, between vulgar satire and people’s invention».

Purgatory by Lenz Foundation, premiers at the Former Old Hospital Crossing – Record Office on Tuesday June 22 and runs until July 1, has been created in collaboration with the Compagnie Dialettali di Parma (Parma Vernacular Companies).

Andrea Azzali is in charge of the music and sound setting and on stage will be Lenz Foundation’s performers Valentina Barbarini, Fabrizio Croci, Paolo Maccini, Franck Berzieri and Delfina Riviera with the actors of the Compagnie Dialettali di Parma Robert Beretta, Sonia Iemmi, Ylenia Pessina, Mirella Pongolini, Cesare Quintavalla, James Rastelli, Silvia Reverberi and Valeria Spocci.

Hospitality.
The Teatro delle Moire and Alessandro Bedosti, a guest artist who participated in previous editions of the Nature Gods Theatres Festival, on Thursday June 22 will present Vous êtes pleine de désespoir, (You are Full of Despair), an exercise in reflection and re-establishment on the myth of the Mermaid.

Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi, an artistic duo who since 2008 has been carrying out a research intertwining dance, performance and visual art, will presents on Tuesday June 27 Le Jardin (The Garden,) in which «two figures wander into an imaginary landscape constantly transformed by their gestures».

Opera, an artistic research group headed by director and visual artist Vincenzo Schino and dancer and choreographer Marta Bichisao, on Thursday June 29 will presents MA: «The Japanese ideogram translated as the word MA is a particular type of aesthetic sensibility that can be expressed as empty space, silence or the absence of motion between two things».

Site-specific projects.
On Saturday June 24 MK Company will present Veduta (View), a dance performance in some historical locations of the center of Parma: «This modular format» suggests choreographer Michele Di Stefano «with changing cast and variable lengths, is dedicated to the city and to the prospective vision of the urban landscape».

On Saturday July 1 MU, Philosophical Reflections While Walking on the Concept of Wake, will be featured. Curated by Leonardo Delogu and Valerio Sirna / DOM- «MU is an exploration inside the city of Parma, an exercise in contemplation and philosophical reflection while walking».

Artists-in-residence.
On Friday June 30 Monica Bianchi, artist-in-residence for the period 2017-2018, will present a study version of Trash Vortex: «A wake of plastic waste is dragged by the current of the North Pacific Ocean towards the Horses Latitude, an area of equatorial calm with extremely variable winds. The show will debut in its final version during the Fall season of Nature Gods Theatres».

Books Presentations.
On Thursday June 22, Tihana Maravic, theater and performing arts scholar, will introduce a dialogue from Vado a prendermi gioco del mondo. Dal folle in Cristo in Bisanzio e in Russia, al performer contemporaneo (I go to mock the world. From the holy fool in Byzantium and Russia, to the contemporary performer), Florence, La Casa Usher, 2016.

Natura Dèi Teatri – Fall.
The fall section of Natura Dèi Teatri, starting on Novembre 18, will host Simon Mayer (Austria), Tim Spooner (UK), Carla Bozulich (USA), Robin Rimbaud aka Scanner (UK), Fiorella Iacono (Italy), Lenz Foundaton (Italy) and Monica Bianchi (Italy). Proper information will be spread when the time comes.

The themes and poetic lines drawn by the Artistic Directors of Nature Gods Theatres 2017 are proteiform and stratified (interpretations of Dante, dance, the relation with urban spaces, contemporary dialogue with the classics and Myth, international performance research): a map to read with care, to get lost within, to interact with.

Nature Gods Theatres is a Lenz Foundation project, created with the support of MiBACT_ Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism, the Emilia-Romagna Region, Municipality of Parma, Parma Healthcare Authority Department for Mental Health Services – Pathological Addictions, Monte di Parma Foundation, Parma University, Pilotta Museum.

Michele Pascarella Lenz Fondazione Press Office

+39 346 4076164 press@lenzfondazione.it