Past event

28 May 2022

Teatro Foce

20:30

Inspired by the historical community of Monte Verità and relating to the current global pandemic emergency, the US-born dancer and choreographer Annie Hanauer reflects on past and present ideas of utopia through her lived experience as a disabled artist.

Utopias are as old as humanity itself. What constitutes them? While they may exist in the mind, they are not (yet) a reality. Utopias are believed to remain unrealised, and thus utopian. Why are we so fascinated by utopias? Do we need utopian experiments to realize greatness, and is the stage perhaps the perfect place to reimagine or recreate them?

In A space for all our tomorrows, Hanauer seeks to channel and present the search for utopia, focusing on how it manifests itself through the body and movement, and leaving open the possibility for multiple perspectives. Her aim is to channel the feeling of something that is intangible, imaginary and different for every person while paying special attention to what utopia means for those who have experienced marginalization in contemporary society.

On stage, in the company of two dancers and a live singer, Hanauer explores the properties of the body, togetherness and individuality, presence and power, always in relation to utopia and disability. Four bodies, with their own wisdom, holding this infinite human search through their insistent presence. Four people finding ways to keep going, alone or together. Four bodies resisting, persevering, refusing to give up.

A performance which is powerful, intense and disorderly all at the same time but also edifying and inviting, able to create and question an imaginary, shared future, a space to imagine our utopias, leaving people with their own perspective and, above all, the feeling that change is possible.

choreography
Annie Hanauer

choreographic advisor
Susanna Recchia

dramaturgy
Silja Gruner

dancers
Annie Hanauer, Laila White, Giuseppe Comuniello

live music
Deborah Lennie

composition
Deborah Lennie, Patrice Grente

costumes
Valentina Golfieri

light design
Marzio Picchetti

audio description
Camilla Guarino

lighting technician
Nicolò Baggio

sound technician
Pietro Maspero

production
LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura, Teatro Danzabile

co-production
IntegrART – a network project sponsored by Migros Culture Percentage a co-production as part of Programmer's Fund of Reso – Dance Network Switzerland, supported by Pro Helvetia
Swiss Arts Council

supported by
DECS Repubblica e Cantone Ticino - Fondo Swisslos
Fondazione Lugano per il Polo Culturale
Manitou Fund
Spazio PLIM – creazioni
Landis & Gyr Stiftung

in collaboration with
Franklin University Switzerland

presented as part of the
Lugano Dance Project
Migros Culture Percentage Dance Festival Steps

Trailer

American dancer, choreographer and pedagogue Annie Hanauer lives and works in London and France. An independent artist, besides teaching and creating her own productions, she regularly collaborates with world renowned artists and companies like Lea Anderson, Wendy Houstoun, Rachid Ouramdane/ CCN2 Grenoble and the Orchestre de Chambre de Paris. From 2008 until 2014 she danced with the London Candoco Dance Company taking part in tours and creative and educational projects all over the world. Hanauer is one of the members of the AnnieVickySarah (AVS) a collective made up of three independent artists and which was founded in 2007 with the aim of developing accessible working practices, she is a member of the Equity Dance Committee which is based in London. Starting out from her own experience as a differently abled woman, she focuses her attention on minorities and on people who are considered “different”. Her choreographic work is aimed at developing a methodology for group performative improvisation and she is engaged in exploring topics like disability, healing and maternity, as well as ideas about utopia and the collective imagination.

After graduating from the Accademia Nazionale di Danza in Rome, Susanna moved to London where she graduated in Dance at the Trinity Laban and won the Marion North award for best performer. Her studies focus on contemporary dance and improvisation. After attending the Dance-Moving Therapy course at Goldsmiths University, she graduated in Anatomy and Physiology at Tower Hamlets College and obtained a Yoga teaching qualification at the Life Centre in London.
She collaborates with various internationally renowned artists and choreographers including the Candoco Dance Company. She holds a Doctorate in Dance obtained at the Roehampton University in London. She currently lives and works in Switzerland.

He is a visually impaired dancer and choreographer from Viareggio, supported by the Oriente Occidente Dance Festival. In 2019 he was invited to participate in the 3rd Europe Beyond Access laboratory in Maastricht. He is a member of Al. Di. Qua, a collective of disabled artists, and internationally active with different dance artists, including Camilla Guarino, the Virgilio Sieni Company and Alessandro Schiattarella with Cie. BewegGrund. He regularly offers workshops. 

The self-taught dancer, choreographer, photographer and visual artist, she was born in a refugee camp in Tindouf, Algeria, where she contracted polio. She began her career as a dancer in 2014 and has worked with international choreographers, including Neus Canalias, Antonio Quiles, Alessandro Schiattarella and Cie. BewegGrund, as well as the Jessie Brett Dance Company from Wales. Her work deals with the absence of her unknown twin sister, from whom she was separated at a young age and who, like her illness, is a part of her history. 

Born in New Zealand, Deborah Lennie grew up in Australia. After studying piano and voice at the NSW Conservatorium of Music, she studied French and political science at the University of Sidney. She then turned to theatre and was accepted at the Actors Centre, Sidney where she trained as an actor. At the beginning of the 2000s she moved to France.
She currently directs FOR WANT OF A BETTER and is associate artist of the Theatre du Champ Exquis, Normandy (Scène Conventionné d’Interêt National). She has to her credit collaborations with choreographers such as Rachid Ouramdane, Mille Engbert Lundt, Annie Hanauer, directors such as Serge Nail, Tanya Gerstle, Laure Rungette, with poets Sonia Chiambretto, Luc Bénazet, Benoît Casas, con gli artisti visivi Christophe Bisson, Bénédicte Hébert, Frédéric Hocké, and with musicians Patrice Grente, Jean-Baptiste Julien, François Chesnel, Naoto Yamagashi, Etienne Zemniak.

Founded in 2005, the Teatro Danzabile company that Emanuel Rosenberg has directed since 2010, aims to integrate apparently distant realities, people, artists, dancers and actors with and without disabilities.
A work of scenic research in which the languages of theatre and dance can become tools to give voice and body to the experience of its components.
In 2011 the company gives life to the Teatro Danzabile association, based in Lugano, which organizes courses of theatre and inclusive dance, seminars, workshops and events.
In collaboration with Inclusione Andicap Ticino, Teatro Danzabile gives life to the Orme festival, the first inclusive arts festival in Italian-speaking Switzerland to join the national network IntegrART (www.integrart.ch).
As the first public institution of the canton Ticino, Teatro Danzabile obtains in 2019, the prestigious recognition Kultur Inklusiv (Servizio Cultura Inclusiva – pro infirmis) (www.kuturinklusiv.ch). Since 2020 Teatro Danzabile is a member of t. Professionisti dello Spettacolo Svizzera italiana.