A project by Fondazione Fabbrica Europa, Centro Studi Musica & Arte, Ensemble San Felice

PALCOSCENICO VIRTUALE. Contemporary Dance Digital Lab, realized as part of the POR FSE 2014-2020 Action A.4.1.1.B – Industry Regional Strategy 4.0 / Regione Toscana, is an intensive training course that has involved of 22 professionals from the performing arts field.
The course, which took place at the PARC Performing Arts Research Centre in Florence from 31 August to 27 October 2021, explored issues of digital transformation, with particular reference to dance productions, in order to update culture and performing arts professionals on the state of the art of digital technologies for the creation of live productions and multimedia contents.
Participants had the opportunity to follow workshops, lectures and work sessions with Italian and international experts from the performing arts and digital technologies sector and to acquire theoretical and practical knowledge aimed at strengthening their artistic and entrepreneurial skills.

The course was divided into a series of thematic modules:

Team Building
Topics: introduction to the course; general objectives, phases and activities; innovative scenarios and opportunities for experimentation
Experts involved: Maurizia Settembri, Giulio Sonno

Digital technologies
Topics: digital technologies applied to the production of dance performances; hardware and software tools; elements of international technical terminology; case studies and application examples
Experts involved: Jacopo Jenna, Alessandro Di Fraia, Diana Arbib, Tommaso Arosio

Technical workshop
Topics: integration of virtual scenographies and multimedia contents in the performing arts; music elements in the multimedia scene; workshops on innovative choreographic productions using digital technologies, virtual sets and multimedia elements
Experts involved: Maurizio Busìa, Fabrizio Cassol (Belgium), Alessandro Sciarroni, Benoît Lachambre (Canada), Charlie Prince (Lebanon), Giulio Sonno, Tommaso Arosio, Diana Arbib

Individual and collective exercises
Topics: guided practical experiences to test the skills acquired in the laboratories; exercises on case studies proposed by the experts; development of group projects
Experts involved: Giulio Sonno, Andrés Morte Terés (Spain)

Specific insights
Topics: experimentation on case studies with the use of “virtual stage” techniques; exercises on topics that emerged in the workshop activities; individual and collective work on case studies proposed by the participants
Experts involved: Giulio Sonno, Omar Rajeh (Lebanon), Alessandro Di Fraia, Maurizia Settembri, Ina Christel Johannessen (Norway), Eric Joris (Belgium)

Entrepreneurship, self-entrepreneurship and self-promotion
Topics: strengthening of soft skills; use of digital technologies for self- entrepreneurship and self-promotion; shooting techniques; elements of video and audio editing; exercises on self-production of video demos
Experts involved: Jacopo Jenna, Gerarda Ventura, Giulio Sonno

Training on the job
Topics: practical applications with coaching aimed at developing professional level production projects
Experts involved: Benoît Lachambre (Canada), Andrés Morte Terés (Spain)

Artistic design
The participants, divided into groups according to their respective interests and research areas with particular reference to contemporary dance, developed the following projects:
• Isola by Ilaria Corsi, with Fabio Novembrini
• Mute_Buconero by Mosé Risaliti, with Chiara Casiraghi, Teresa Cecchi, Lucrezia Rossellini, Flavia Zaganelli, Elena Zagaroli
• Transumanza by Katiuscia Favilli, with Mosé Risaliti, Chiara Casiraghi, Elena Monini, Teresa Cecchi, Lucrezia Rossellini, Flavia Zaganelli, Elena Zagaroli, Isabella Giustina
• Esercizi di apofenia by Camilla Giani, with Sabrina Mazzuoli
• Project inspired by the fairy-tale character of Baba Jaga by Isabella Giustina, with Olga Pavlenko
• From interstellar to calore by Sabrina Mazzuoli, with Chiara Casiraghi, Camilla Giani, Isabella Giustina, Pietro Pireddu
• Muscoli by Alessandro Marzotto Levy, with Casia Vengoechea

At the end of the training process, the Fondazione Fabbrica Europa decided to make available – from November 2021 to March 2022 – the spaces of the PARC Performing Arts Research Centre for further study and development phases of these projects.

[photo: Julian Maiwald]