Startup Forum Awards 2024
2 May 2024At this years’ Spring Forward in Darmstadt, Wiesbaden and Mainz (21 – 23 March), we held the third edition of Startup Forum where a group of emerging dance presenters. Ilias Chatzigeorgiou, Dimitris Chimonas and a group formed by Samuel Retortillo, Nina Fajdiga, Simona Deaconescu, Tony Tran and Masako Matsushita have been awarded €10K each to realise the proposal they presented.
At this years’ Spring Forward in Darmstadt, Wiesbaden and Mainz (21 – 23 March), we held the third edition of Startup Forum where a group of emerging dance presenters were guided through the festival by Betsy Gregory, Roberto Casarotto and three Aerowaves Partners; Pirjetta Mulari (Annantalo, Helsinki), Lisa Reinheimer (Dansateliers, Rotterdam) and Francesca Manica (Romaeuropa, Rome). The participants were Dimitris Chimonas (Cyprus), Evelyn Raudsepp (Estonia), Ilias Chatzigeorgiou (Greece), Masako Matshushita (Italy), Nina Fajdiga (Slovenia), Tony Tran (Norway), Simona Deaconescu (Romania), Samuel Retortillo (Spain) and
Renata Piotrowska-Auffret (Poland). Following the festival they were invited to propose a curatorial project involving work by Aerowaves artists they had seen during the festival
Ilias Chatzigeorgiou, Dimitris Chimonas and a group formed by Samuel Retortillo, Nina Fajdiga, Simona Deaconescu, Tony Tran and Masako Matsushita have been awarded €10K each to realise the proposal they presented.
Ilias Chatzigeorgiou has proposed DANCELLS/DANCE/FESTIVAL, a project taking place inside the detention centre of Koridallos in Athens. Dimitris Chimonas will organise WHERE THE SUN NEVER SETS, based on Viktor Szeri’s performance fatigue, a piece that “portraits millennials’ frustration” and taking place in Cyprus during summer 2024. Under the title Growing Movements: Dance Reforestation, the group composed of Samuel Retortillo, Simona Deaconescu, Nina Fajdiga, Tony Tran, and Masako Matsushita will bring REFACE, by Les Idoles, to Margen International Dance and Nature Festival in La Rioja (Spain) and will organise the inaugural meeting of Growing Movements, a curatorial think tank group.
DANCELLS/DANCE/FESTIVAL by Ilias Chatzigeorgiou
A dance Festival inside the detention centre of Koridallos, the largest and most overpopulated prison in Athens.
The aim of “DANCELLS/DANCE/FESTIVAL” is to bring the transformative power of dance to unconventional settings, starting with a pilot festival at Koridallos Detention Center, from 10 -12 September, in collaboration with the Greek National Opera Learning & Participation department (GNO). This initiative seeks to connect inmates and professionals in the cultural sector through workshops, performances, and post-event discussions centred around themes of intimacy, relationships, self-expression and memory. By addressing themes of human connection, vulnerability and personal narrative, the festival aims to challenge perceptions and inspire empathy. As part of the programme, this curatorial project includes the presentation of the work Where the Boys Are, a duet exploring different perspectives on relationships between young men, by Yotam Peled & the Free Radicals plus a workshop and discussion with the company.
WHERE THE SUN NEVER SETS by Dimitris Chimonas
Taking place in Cyprus in summer 2024, this is a curatorial proposal centred on Viktor Szeri’s performance, fatigue, including a programme of workshops, commissions of three new, short dance films and the development and adaptation of the piece. The project is supported by Nea Kinisi (a dancers and choreographers association), Queer Wave LGBTQIA + Film Festival, and Sessions, a series of queer happenings. WHERE THE SUN NEVER SETS will take place in the mountains of Cyprus, and will involve artists from both sides of the divide.
Through WHERE THE SUN NEVER SETS Chimonas builds a poetic context embracing slowness, to make room for the immeasurable and invaluable. Chimonas describes Viktor Szeri’s fatigue as “an honest portrait of a frustrated generation of millennials (…) against a backdrop of eco-anxiety, politically polarised societies, and injustices (…). Szeri’s performance invites us into a slowness as an act of resistance.”
Growing Movements: Dance Reforestation by Samuel Retortillo, Simona Deaconescu, Nina Fajdiga, Tony Tran, and Masako Matsushita
The 7th edition of the Margen International Dance and Nature Festival unites forest with art, community with territory, and tangible with intangible heritages. The interdisciplinary festival, directed by Samuel Retortillo, will take place from 26 – 30 June 2024 across different towns of La Rioja, in Northern Spain, an area of the so-called “emptied Spain”, an extensive region with towns inhabited by few people whose access to culture is almost non-existent. The Rural Choreographic Center operates in this territory, carrying out “cultural reforestation” work.
Within this context, the Startup Forum group proposes to include an outdoor adaptation of REFACE by Les Idoles (Chandra Grangean and Lise Messina), a piece whose transformative concept can spark curiosity and discussion amongst an audience which is not used to seeing dance. Alongside the festival, the group will gather for the kick off of “Growing Movements”, a curatorial think tank to discuss new practices and ways to make dance programming and presentation more equitable and accessible. They will explore themes such as decentralising urban dance culture, non-human territory, fostering community bonds through dance, and using the natural landscape as an eco-sustainable stage for dance.
The goal of the curatorial team, composed of artists and producers from Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Romania, and Norway, is to actively diverge from traditional networking by deconstructing its current form and imagining new collaborative methods.
