Moving Borders Arte Sella International Workshop

About the project and the meeting

‘Moving Borders – approaches to dance from the new Ukrainian diaspora across Europe’, is a project led by Aerowaves which brings together the museum Arte Sella (IT), La Briqueterie CDCN (FR) and Tanec Praha (CZ), and is supported by the Creative Europe programme of the EU. Through this cooperation project we are exploring how three female dance artists from Ukraine  are informing approaches to welcoming and engaging refugees through dance, and in the development of inclusive and cohesive practices across Europe.

The meeting at Arte Sella – The contemporary mountain museum  combined workshops where participants shared their practices working in foreign contexts and engaging people (non-professionals of all ages) with dance. The encounter was devised by Anna Kushnirenko, one of the three Ukrainian dance artists involved in the project, who has been living and working in Bassano del Grappa for 2 years. Discussions were facilitated by the dance dramaturg Monica Gillette. Arte Sella, the host partner of the meeting, also invited ten Ukrainian dance artists now based in Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Ukraine. They are: Olena Polianska, Anastasiia Rembetska, Olesksandra Lytvyn, Polina Bulat, Ira Kifa, Aline Tskhovryebova, Kateryna Pogorielova, Anna Lutsenko, Daria Heraschchenko and Maria Bakalo.

Karina Buckley’s Journal: 25 - 27 August, 2024

President of Arte Sella, Giacomo Bianchi said at our first Moving Borders meeting in Paris that every visitor to the open-air museum in Northern Italy is a body, not just a brain. Our short residency there embraced that body-brain connection with a series of sensory meditations and embodied thought experiments that drew from the exhibits and surroundings of the “contemporary mountain”.

The programme for this edition was curated by Moving Borders artist Anna Kushnirenko – originally from Kherson, now exiled in Bassano del Grappa, Northern Italy – and she leads the first physical practice with the help of Alina Tskhovryebova, one of the ten Ukrainian dance artists who took part in this chapter of the research. Some willing, perhaps unsuspecting visitors to the museum join us in a cupola constructed of wood (Aneas Wilder’s Untitled #169) as the facilitators draw parallels between the exhibits and our bodies – both give an outward impression of stability but are constantly changing. A series of sensory cues – tapping, shaking, vocalising, listening – make us more aware of our transient physical and emotional states before we move on to the nearby exhibit, Henrique Oliveira’s Common Root.

The giant knotted trunk presents endless opportunities to physically reflect and ruminate on its natural textures and unnatural shape. We imagine ourselves as trees in a storm for a balance experiment that prompts a question we will mull over later – do you enjoy the stability or the falling? Balancing is likened to the things that are permanent in our bodies – the things we hold tight to – and we’re encouraged to let go before finishing our practice in silent reflection on the banks of the river Brenta.

Contemplating our experience of the practice with dramaturg, Monica Gillette, one of the thoughts to emerge is that dance is a strong instrument to work on the mind and both that concept and the theme of impermanence are picked up in the next session, a three-part practice led by Olena Polianska and Anastasiia Rembetska, who is based in Kyiv and one of the two participating artists at Arte Sella who have chosen to remain in Ukraine. For this, we find ourselves in what, to the uninitiated, looks something like a crop circle in the middle of a meadow. In fact, it’s Michelangelo Pistoletto’s The Third Paradise, which symbolises human intelligence finding ways to coexist with the intelligence of nature.

It’s fitting then that we begin the session communing with the landscape, taking inspiration from rocks and trees and every living thing – our fellow dancers included. We enter into silent dialogue using our bodies, creating connections over vast and tiny distances, with strict instructions to touch with our eyes but not with our skin. No-contact interaction is followed by full contact improvisation, when we’re reminded that the landscape of our partner is constantly shifting and has the capacity to move us, depending on how we respond to it.  The session finishes with a borderline performative practice based on the verbal cue “move and ask yourself how much do I cause and how much do I react?”

Much of Day 2 is spent worshipping beside Giuliano Mauri’s Tree Cathedral – a living, breathing basilica of beeches fashioned into a magnificent Gothic structure of columns, aisles and naves. Maria Bakalo (still living and working in Lviv, Ukraine) and Oleksandra Lytvyn lead us in the first practice, which begins with a warm up that draws inspiration from the non-linear shapes that surround us. We invoke curves, circles and spirals as we weave ourselves around our own bodies and each other’s. A Fake Therapy session follows when we pair up to minister to each other in a practice borrowed from Valentina Desideri. The “therapist” brings their attention and intention to the “patient”, who is receptive to their healing actions (which include everything from whispering and singing to massage and gentle touch) as we explore what Bakalo describes as the thin line between medicine and art.

Local dance troupe, Base 9 join us for our next practice – a pursuit of pleasure and playfulness led by Ira Kyfa that provokes shrieks of laughter and delight. We shake, prattle and run our way through a series of movements and vocalisations that play with pace, power and volume to generate what is later described as “incredible, beautiful, powerful, sexy feminine energy”. The final dance of the day also celebrates pleasure –  of movement, rest and co-creation. Our host artist, Anna Kushnirenko leads the performative practice she first encountered in the Ukrainian mountains at a workshop with Rob Hayden from Ultima Vez. Working in pairs, periods of solo dancing and repose are punctuated by moments of moving together before each interaction ends with a hug.

There was time for just one practice on our final half day in Arte Sella and we play chicken with the rain (taking shelter under a nearby tree when we lose) to embrace Anna Lutsenko’s riotous combination of JLo booty shakes and clapping game choreography. It is a joyous conclusion to our programme of movement that even mother nature appreciates – she indicates her approval and applause with a crash of thunder as the music stops.

Discussion sessions built into our residency reveal how dance practices have helped the displaced artists navigate the turmoil caused by the war in their homeland. They uncover how restorative the serene surroundings of nature are to bodies that have spent more than two and a half years in fight or flight mode. Most of all, they demonstrate the importance of connection – how building or renewing bonds with like-minds generates a sense of belonging that opens up a new world of happiness, hope and possibilities.

The next Moving Borders workshop will be curated by Rita Lira at La Briqueterie, Paris from November 18 – 20.