as part of the Fabbrica Europa 2026 festival

Dentro il contemporaneo [Inside the Contemporary] is a project dedicated to choreographers under the age of 25, developed in collaboration with the Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi and curated by Marinella Guatterini, dance critic and lecturer.

Over two evenings, seven performances created by six emerging choreographers who graduated from the Milan-based school in 2025 explore territories of beauty and experimentation, giving rise to distinctive artistic voices through movement, song, sound, and a precious sense of creative exuberance.
The project also includes critical reflections by Marinella Guatterini, opening a discussion on the contemporary in the performing arts and examining its languages, forms, tensions, and ongoing transformations.

This first evening features:

GIOVANNA SECCIA
PELLE

We are constantly shedding our skin, constantly reshaping ourselves. What is the balance between holding on and letting go? How many skins must we shed? How many do we truly carry within us? How frightening is it to leave one behind in order to embrace another? And do we ever really leave it behind? Or is it simply another stage of transformation? Perhaps our journey inward only truly takes shape in the liminal space between one skin and the next.

Born in Barletta, Italy, in 2002, Giovanna Seccia graduated in Classical Studies from the University of Bari in 2024 and completed her training at Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi in Milan in 2025. She works as a dancer and performer while developing her own choreographic research. Pelle (Skin) marks the first chapter of this ongoing artistic journey.

choreography an performance: Giovanna Seccia
dramaturg: Anna Farina
photo: Denise Prandini

ARIANNA DELLE GEMME
SENZA CODA

Senza coda is a choreographic research project investigating the transformation of the body through the symbolic figure of the tail, an evolutionary remnant and ancestral trace that reactivates perception and imagination. Drawing on children’s play as a non-hierarchical mode of relation, the solo by Arianna Delle Gemme explores the body as a site of desire and metamorphosis, opening a liminal space where the real and the imagined coexist.

Arianna Delle Gemme (2003) is a dancer and performer. She graduated in 2025 at Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi and made her debut at MORSI festival with Senza coda, which was a finalist in the Vetrine della giovane danza d’autore Anticorpi XL 2026 showcase.

choreography and performance: Arianna Delle Gemme
dramaturgical supervision: Paola Bedoni
music: Toccata, by Federico Chiari; Heffalumps and Woozles (Organ Cover) by Richard and Robert Sherman
photo: Lorenzo Gorini

MARCELLO MALCHIODI
ICARUS

There are 206 bones in the human skeleton; a skeleton that can be seen either as a support or as a cage. ICARUS is a project born out of the need to investigate the meaning of the syndrome named after the Greek myth through the discovery of one’s own skeleton, its possibilities and limitations, while attempting to survive in a fast-paced and demanding world. Just as Icarus is unable to appreciate what he has, the performer cannot find peace with their own body and seeks to radically transform it, to the point of fighting against it as though it were an entity foreign to themselves.

Marcello Malchiodi (2004) is a dancer, performer and choreographer. Gratuated from the Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi, in 2024 he premiered his solo Icarus. Prometheus (2025) was selected for the XL Anticorpi 2026 showcase and for Nuove Traiettorie.

choreography and performance: Marcello Malchiodi
choreographic supervision: Paola Bedoni
dramaturg: Isaia Ragona Coco
music: Morton Feldman, Sergei Rachmaninoff
photo: Denise Prandini

ALVISE GIOLI
IN FONDO ALLA LITORANEA

In fondo alla Litoranea is a dive, a breath-hold immersion and, at the same time, a resurfacing. Set within a hybrid environment suspended between the depths of the sea and the vertigo of a water park, between dance and video installation, the performance explores our aquatic ontology, our relationship with water, and the need to reconsider this relationship.

Alvyse (Alvise Gioli) is a choreographer and visual artist. They graduated in Contemporary Dance from the Paolo Grassi Civic School of Theatre in Milan and are currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Visual Arts and Expanded Cinema at IUAV University of Venice. Their research draws primarily from dance and the use of video as a medium for investigating movement beyond the boundaries of human presence, exploring a multimedia environment capable of embracing a plurality of languages.

by Alvyse (Alvise Gioli)
with Giorgia Atti, Arianna delle Gemme, Rossana Martire
music: Clariloops, David Bowie, Kelly Lee Owens, Caterina Barbieri, Brian Eno
photo: Denise Prandini

cover photo (detail): Denise Prandini