Oriente Occidente represents an exceptional example in the cultural panorama of Italy. Started in 1981 in Rovereto by Lanfranco Cis, it is a pioneering performing arts festival connecting different cultures and artistic backgrounds. Since the foundation, its main purpose is to provoke and promote the encounter of different artistic traditions, practices and artforms. Over the years, the artistic direction has been signed by Cis and Paolo Monfrini, who passed away in 2018. Now, the artistic direction is under Cis’ guidance, while Anna Consolati is the general director.
When at the beginning of the 1980s an industrial crisis hit Rovereto and the Vallagarina valley, a mountainous area with an intense connection with European history (World War I), the local administration gave culture and the arts the responsibility and the resources to relaunch the town as a capital of culture. Today, different cultural entities, such as the MART Museum, dialogue with Oriente Occidente and create a particularly active cultural and artistic network attracting cultural entrepreneurs, artists and, of course, tourists who benefit from the proximity of the Alps and a vibrant, year-round cultural scene.
Having evolved from a festival ‘only’ running between late August and early September, Oriente Occidente is now based on three different and intertwined areas of activity. The ‘Festival’ section is accompanied by the ‘Studio’ and the ‘People’ sections, respectively dedicated to professional and pre-professional artistic training and participatory programmes involving the local citizenship and dance amateurs. As curator of the ongoing activity of Oriente Occidente Studio, and in accordance with the spirit of the institution, I have been eager to create an occasion of encounter. I envisaged a moment where Springback writers could experience the strongest know-how and characteristics of Oriente Occidente, its relationship with the local museums, where dance has been regularly produced and shown, and its engagement in promoting the accessibility of the performing arts for people with disabilities.
Oriente Occidente dance festival – with a programme both indoors and outdoors, both in the heart of the city and its surroundings – displays a continuous interest in intercultural perspectives, cross-disciplinarity, sustainability and accessibility. Over the last years it has promoted a series of projects addressing, very specifically, accessibility, and the presence of disabled artists in the performing arts field through transnational projects such as Europe Beyond Access. Alongside new areas of engagement, its historical contribution to the international performing arts scene consists in the possibility to show how both Eastern and Western traditions and innovation can encounter and dialogue through their various forms of knowledge, practices and future perspectives.
Mediterraneans is the subtitle and the fil rouge of this year’s edition. Following the festival’s aim since its start, the programme looks at plurality and diversity as means for new forms of inclusion and justice. Oriente Occidente aims at activating a true call to action through the performing arts in response to our present issues, endorsing the performing arts and all their artists, giving them the responsibility and the freedom to research and develop answers, hypotheses and experiences which can nourish the way we evolve and the way we think.