After the working period in Korea and the debut at the Nakseonjae Hall in Changdeokgung Palace, LA PRIMA DANZA / The Butterfly Dream is presented for the first time in Italy as part of the CROSS Festival 2026 in Verbania.
La Prima Danza [The First Dance] unfolds as an artistic journey in multiple chapters that explores the relationship between space, memory, the opera, and the audience through the language of dance, transforming sites of historical and cultural heritage into venues for performative experiences.
The first phase of the project, À coups de marteau, took place in September 2025 in the Chiostro and the Cenacolo of Ognissanti in Florence, where the choreographer duo Damiano Ottavio Bigi and Alessandra Paoletti led the performance with Italian and international artists.
The journey then continued in Seoul, at the Nakseonjae Hall of Changdeokgung Palace, as part of Korea.A.Round Culture, with The Butterfly Dream, a creation by Bigi, Paoletti, and Aesoon Ahn, together with Korean performers. Here, Changdeokgung Palace is taken as a symbolic and layered space, marked by historical, political, and cultural transformations. Starting from this context, the work opens up to a universal dimension, creating a resonance between places that have undergone similar processes of destruction, reconstruction, and the rewriting of memory.
In The Butterfly Dream, reality and illusion overlap: movement, like a dream, reveals the invisible.
The performance is divided into two parts, each lasting approximately 30 minutes: one choreographed by Bigi Paoletti FRITZ Company and the other by Ahn Aesoon.
Bigi Paoletti FRITZ Company is a dance-theatre company founded in 2020 by Damiano Ottavio Bigi, a dancer and choreographer formerly of the Tanztheater Wuppertal under Pina Bausch, who has worked with Dimitris Papaioannou, among others, and Alessandra Paoletti, an actress, writer, and director active in dance theatre and contemporary dance, who has led numerous international projects and collaborated for many years as a guest director with the Istanbul Municipal Theatre. Active together since 2013, when they began their collaboration with Yuvaya Dönmek, Babam için, created for the Istanbul Municipal Theatre, they have developed a practice situated at the intersection of dance, theatre, and visual arts, interweaving creation, pedagogy, and site-specific practices. Their work explores compositional, dramaturgical, and kinesthetic structures often inspired by scientific models, giving rise to performative universes that inscribe themselves in bodies and expand into space and landscape, redefining the relationship between presence, environment, and perception. Following the premiere of Un Discreto Protagonista (2022), the company has presented its work at major international festivals and theatres in Europe and Asia and is supported by international partners.
Ahn Aesoon Company, founded in 1985 and directed by Ahn Aesoon, blends Korean identity with contemporary sensibilities in a choreographic style that reinterprets Eastern traditions and concepts. Ahn’s work was awarded the 1998 Grand Prix at the Rencontres Chorégraphiques de Bagnolet and is documented in the Oxford Dictionary of Dance and the International Dictionary of Modern Dance. Over more than forty years of activity, she has transformed elements such as shamanism, ritual performance, and kokdu into a contemporary language, and today the company continues to explore choreographic possibilities capable of transcending cultural boundaries.
production: Fondazione Fabbrica Europa per le arti contemporanee and Ahn Aesoon Company
a work by Bigi Paoletti FRITZ Company and Ahn Aesoon
performers: Nae-ui Kim, Ji-hyung Kim, Song-yeon Park, Hyeon-seok Lee, You-joung Lim
traditional dancer: Joung-youn Son
costume design: Seonoc Im
sound design: Jung-hoon Pi
sound engineer Ju-won Jeon
project direction: Maurizia Settembri
production: On Sim (Korea), Alice Chiari with Greta Poli (Italy)
with the support of Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (Korea), KOFICE (Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange), 2025 Korea.A.Round Culture – Bilateral International Collaboration Program for Arts & Culture (Korea) | projects selected by: KOFICE (Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange) 2025 KoreaA.Round Culture – Bilateral International Collaboration Program for Arts & Culture (Korea)
partners: Fabbrica Europa, Secret Florence, Florence Dance Festival, Comune di Firenze, CROSS Festival, Fondazione Egri Danza CRID, Comune di Verbania, CRID Sardegna – Centro di rilevante interesse per la Danza, Resextensa, Porta d’Oriente – centro di produzione della danza
photo (detail): Lim Tae Joon
