16, 17, 18, 19 July, from h. 16:30
Parco Comunale, via della Montagna, 2, Zafferana Etnea (CT)
FREE ENTRY
in collaboration with ZED Festival and EN-KNAP
Two selections of 360° dance films curated in collaboration with international organizations. An immersive experience in dance through the use of digital technologies.
in collaboration with ZED Festival
A selection of 360° VR dance films presented at ZED Festival in 2025. ZED Festival renews the dialogue between dance and virtual reality with a selection of four internationally produced 360° VR dance films, chosen by the artistic direction.
An ambitious new selection, featuring two national premieres and the best of a particularly fruitful recent production; four high-quality films where dance returns as the protagonist in profound harmony with the 360° camera. Mature films, both artistically and technologically, possessing great visual and narrative power.
It seems like such a simple request: a simple silence. A quiet without the weight of work, love, or death. An intermediate moment. But we have learned that there is an almost unbridgeable gap between this ambition and the reality of life, that our silence is never simple. Simple Silence is the final chapter of Riverbed Theatre’s award-winning “Just For You” trilogy, which premiered in Venice in 2022. This new 360 VR experience simultaneously blurs the line between seeing and being seen. The audience is not a witness to the experience; they are the experience itself. A simple silence confronts us with the discomfort of our unavoidable truths, the fact that every beginning implies an end, the fact that we are shadows passing through the darkness.
CREDITS
Direction: Craig Quintero | Producer: Su-Ling Yeh | Cast: Yu-Hsin Yu, Ollie Huang, Fang-Fang Lin, Yu-Shan Tsai, Yen-Yi Liang, Wei-Cih Li, Ping-Fei Hu | Set Design: Chang-Chih Chen, Shiou-Ling Sheng | Head Electrician: Wen-Tse Chen | Production: VR Funique | VR Project Manager: Liana Monique Yao | VR Filming: William Chou, Ming-Yuan Chuan | VR Post-Production: Ming-Yang Yeh, Ming-Yuan Chuan, Sven Huang, Nien-Chu Ciu | VR Editing: Ping-Ying Yen | Music: Yu-Jun Wang This project is supported by the Taiwan Content Plan XR Immersive Content Project and the Kaohsiung Film Archive Presented by Kaohsiung Film Archive, Riverbed Theatre, Riverbed Theatre Ltd.
“Wave”, a psychedelic and immersive dance film in which a dancer’s body is manipulated through time using frame repetition, delay, and repositioning. This creates a choreography where the history of a movement forms a new kind of organism. A group choreography performed by a solo dancer. Every movement influences the overall shape of the group. The dancer’s past transforms into their direct shadow. Thanks to the use of 360° 3D, “Wave” will be more than a film that can be viewed from a distance. The use of virtual reality offers the viewer the opportunity to be an unnoticed observer who has visual control over time and can act as the director of the movements and choreography. An extra dimension is added through the use of digital manipulation, which can evoke emotions such as claustrophobia, euphoria, or surprise. For “Wave”, Hess collaborated with dancer and choreographer Sedrig Verwoert.
CREDITS
Direction: Bart Hess | Choreography: Sedrig Verwoert | Performers: Sedrig Verwoert & Arad Inbar | Music: Thys de Vlieger | Created with the support of: Nederlands Filmfonds & Stimuleringsfonds
Part 5/5 is part of 6 Degrees, a performance installation that explores the boundaries of reality, where technology pushes us beyond our current existence toward unknown future realities. In a future where the Earth is irreparably damaged and the climate crisis has devastated the planet, irreversible consequences have forced humanity to live in sterile environments controlled by artificial intelligence. Every breath is a laborious act, and movement itself is reduced to a basic physiological function for survival. Yet, amidst this bleak existence, a glimmer of hope remains. Through discomfort and instability, the raw and primitive movements of the human body offer a flash of resilience, suggesting that even in the most unnatural world, the human spirit retains the capacity to adapt, endure, and prevail.
CREDITS
Concept, choreography, and direction: Jamie Lee and Stanislav Dobák | Creation and performance: Edita Antalová, Cécile Da Costa, Simona Machovičová, Marek Menšík | Music and sound design: Martin Hůla | Costumes: Michaela Semotánová | Project curator: Martina Hajdyla Lacová | Creative producer: Jiří Hajdyla | 1st AD: Ondřej Moravec | VR: Brainz Immersive studio | Camera and editing: Jan Čermák | Director of photography: Stanislav Dobák | Production: Eva Roškaňuková, Václav Sahula
The VR film BODIES OF WATER invites you to hold your breath and let yourself be carried away and transformed by water in the company of curious individuals. At nightfall, they invade a public swimming pool. Immersed in the mass of water, these bodies transcend the limits of their natural environment and undergo a metamorphosis. They then engage in a contemporary dance that reveals them in a different light. The aquatic environment makes them flexible and weightless, but also vulnerable and combative. This poetic, enveloping, and suffocating mass unites them, separates them, and shapes them. BODIES OF WATER explores the transformation of human bodies in their interaction with water, a fluid and adaptable medium that simultaneously presents resistance. It takes you underwater for an immersive experience that unveils an unusual and otherwise inaccessible contemporary dance.
CREDITS
Artistic Direction: Chélanie Beaudin-Quintin and Caroline Laurin-Beaucage | Director of Photography: Pierre Mainville | Camera Operator: Emmanuel Béhier-Migeon (Aquamedias) | Editing: Chélanie Beaudin-Quintin | VFX, Compositing, Coloring: Alain Baril (Studio Post-Kopic) | Costumes: Camille Thibault-Bédard | Music: Vincent Legault | Sound Design and Mix: Bruno Bélanger (PRIM) | Technical Team: Sylvain (PostPix), Louis-Philippe and Benjamin Huppé (UP2VR) | Main Cast: Léonie Bélanger, Rachel Harris, Jimmy Chung, Rowan Mercille, Luca “Lazylegz” Patuelli, Emmanuel Jouthe | Supporting Cast: Emmanuelle Martin, Marie-Ève Quiliquot, Diana Léon, Lorenzo Serafino, Alida Esmail, Ciro Melgaço, Cara Roy | Production Company: art et essai | Producers: Jeanne-Marie Poulain, Laurence Wells, Irène Bessone, Line Sander Egede | Associates: Anaëlle Béglet, Rémi Dufresne | Project Manager: Laurence Wells | Production Manager: Laurence Wells, Juliette Tarwacki | Distribution: Diversion
A selection of 360° VR dance films produced by EN – KNAP (Slovenia).
Imagine the body, its parts and props, their movements, breaking down and breaking away, performing functions beyond their common functionality. The functions answer only to themselves. The body, its parts and props, their movements become objects (of dance), objects of becoming, and use objects, props to become objects (of dance), objects of becoming. The body, its parts and props, their movements take on a life of their own, become a world in and of themselves. This “objectification” is no alienation, it is agency, spooky action at a distance. Freedom of potential, freedom from limit. An endless play, a play as an end. A sensibility, more than a sense. A surplus. This “objectification” is no imitation, zero sum game, it is autonomy. If anything, it is reverse imitation; life is art, object is dance. Did someone say “camp”? “Cray–cray”.
Unfolding through a series of vignettes – borrowing inspiration from the philosophy of Bauhaus and the Triadic Ballet – Masterwork for Six Dancers (2023) explores the ways in which the body sheds cultural symbols and societal meanings projected upon it over time. By using objects as costumes that impede movement and give it a mechanical tinge, the body reshapes its autonomy in a flurry of functional obstacles. Its functions slip between the concrete and the abstract into choreography. Each and every body is a masterpiece in its own right, emerging from the entanglement of the self and the environment. By modifying the body, by “objectifying” it and extending it into space and surroundings, by submitting and submerging the body, a paradoxical freedom and autonomy emerge – that of art and artifice.
CREDITS
Choreography: Emese Cuhorka & Csaba Molnár | Created and performed by: Mattia Cason, Tina Habun, Davide Lafabiana, Tamas Tuza, Carolina Alessandra Valentini, Nika Zidar/ Núria Capella | Direction of adaptation: Iztok Kovač | Editing and graphic design: Luka Umek | Music: Ábris Gryllus | Light design: Leon Curk | Costumes: Emese Cuhorka, Csaba Molnár, Katarina Markov (Atelje d.o.o.) | 360 recording: Omar Ismail | Sound recording: Igor Iskra (001) | Sound design: Samo Jurca (001) | Rehearsal Director: Ana Štefanec Knez | Technical coordination: Jaka Šimenc | Technical support: Omar Ismail, Leon Curk, Hotimir Knific, Fabijan Purg, Gal Škrjanec Skaberne, Aljaž Zaletel | Executive producer: Nataša Ramovš | Production: En–Knap Productions
16 September 1947 is the day when the new border line split Gorizia: one city became two countries. For nearly a decade, relatives, friends, and lovers were completely separated. Yet people found ways to overcome the border—with imagination, courage, and human warmth. This is one of their stories:
On 13 August 1950, around 5,000 residents of Nova Gorica, Solkan, Šempeter, the Karst, Brda, and the surrounding valleys peacefully crossed the border at the Red House in Rožna Dolina. Within a few hours, they reunited with relatives and bought scarce goods, among them sorghum brooms. It was on that sunny day that these brooms became a symbol that the border could—at least for a moment—be simply ‘swept away.’
Amateur Smugglers 360 invites us to take a closer look at the border: through the body, memory, and technology. To step into stories where a divided space transforms into a space of community, play, and humanity. Enter the VR experience. Look, listen, and encounter a border without a border.
CREDITS
Concept and Direction: Iztok Kovač, Sašo Podgoršek | Co-Creators and Performers: Mattia Cason, Tina Habun, Fiona MacBride, Carolina Alessandra Valentini, Nika Zidar | Extras: Residents of the Municipality of Miren–Kostanjevica, Local youth from Gorizia and Nova Gorica | VR Filming and Post-Production: Luka Umek (Komposter) | Costumes: Katarina Markov (Atelje d.o.o.) | Sound Recording: Matic Berus (001) | Sound Editing: Samo Jurca (001) | Design: Marko Damiš | Head of Communications: Valerija Intihar | Rehearsal Director: Ana Štefanec Knez | Production: En–Knap Productions | Co-Production: ArtistiAssociati Centro di Produzione Teatrale | Executive Producers: Karmen Keržar (En–Knap Productions), Sara Pastorcich (ArtistiAssociati) | Acknowledgments: | Mauricij Humar, Mayor (Municipality of Miren–Kostanjevica) | Mag. Ariana Durnik, Director (Public Institute Miren Kras)
Irena Škvarč, Director (Goriška Public Library) | Locations: Miren, Pristava Cemetery, and Europe Square in Nova Gorica and Gorizia | The project Amateur Smugglers 360 is based on the dance performance Amateur Smugglers by the En–Knap dance group and the Italian duo Silvia Gribaudi / Andrea Rampazzo.
Storm-like and physically charged, the work proposes a different epic—one written by many bodies navigating instability together. Through the VR360 experience, the audience enters the fluid choreographic landscape from within, encountering the work’s shifting relations of distance, exposure, and collectivity firsthand. Glory is no longer monumental; it arises in interconnection, shared endurance, and fleeting solidarities within uncertain terrain.
At its core lies a pressing question: who carries the burden of collapse? As dominant narratives of power erode, the sovereign figure gives way to a fragile plurality negotiating survival together. Water becomes a charged theatrical and visual motif, evoking the pathos of classical heroism and monumental representation. Its presence alters rhythm and resistance. Bodies slip, support, collide, and reorganize, recalibrating between solidity and exposure. Collectivity emerges not as harmony but as adaptation under pressure. The choreography moves between density and dispersion, unison and fracture, suggesting a community in a constant assembling and disassembling.
CREDITS
Concept and choreography: Sofia Mavragani | Direction of the 360 performance: Iztok Kovač | Dancers: Plesna skupina En–Knap (Tina Habun, Fiona Macbride, Carolina Alessandra Valentini, Nika Zidar, Mattia Cason, Matija Franješ), April Veselko, Tjaša Bucik, Tara Ukmar, Semina Rizou, Sebastian Zamaro
Rehearsals director: Ana Štefanec Knez | Original music: Thalia Ioannidou | Sound: Martin Vovk, Samo Jurca (001) | 360 Video production: Omar Ismail | Costumes: Katarina Markov (Atelje d.o.o.), Sofia Mavragani | Production: En–Knap (Stage360)
The system produces. It produces numbers, profits, people, masses. It produces more, it produces too much, it produces superfluously. But no matter where one finds oneself in the system, no matter where one is stuck or forced out by the system, the force, the compulsion, remains: one consumes. They who are superfluous consume. They who do not consume are branded.
In an intertwining choreography of movement, words and music, Branded takes on personal and social positions, situations in which the ‘superfluous’ and the ‘branded’ are a symptom, an effect of the system, of its antagonisms, its struggles, from the economy of comfort and the unemployed to the democracy of choice and the homeless. Who is the last one we give up when we have given up a human being?
Branded was created as part of the Stage360 project and based on The Superfluous, a performance based on the essay Superfluous Man by Ilya Troyanov.
CREDITS
Concept and direction: Iztok Kovač | Performed and created by: Mattia Cason, Tamás Tuza, Carolina Alessandra Valentini, Tina Habun, Davide Lafabiana, Nuria Capella Florensa, and a musician Damir Avdić | Original Cast: EN-KNAP Group (Mattia Cason, Luke Thomas Dunne, Rada Kovačević, Tamás Tuza, Carolina Alessandra Valentini, Tina Habun) and musicians: Damir Avdić, Boštjan Gombač, Tomaž Grom | Original music: Damir Avdić, Boštjan Gombač, Tomaž Grom | Editing: Andrej Lamut, Iztok Kovač | Image processing, visual and sound effects: Omar Ismail | Set design: Niko Novak | Camera: Marko Cafnik | Lighting design: Stanko Herceg, Andrej Lamut | Costume design: Katarina Markov (Atelje d.o.o.) | Sound recording: Miha Rudolf (001) | Sound processing: Samo Jurca (001) | Photo: Andrej Lamut | Head of project: Iztok Kovač | Camera and editing: Andrej Lamut | Graphics, effects and technical coordination: Omar Ismail | Sound recording and processing: 001 | Assistance and consulting on using VR technology: Marko Cafnik & Multiversum | Technical and production support: Španski borci Cultural Centre | Produced by: En–Knap Productions | Executive producer: Nataša Ramovš
The VR Dance Corner is made possible thanks to ZED FESTIVAL Bologna in collaboration with COORPI Torino and CRO.ME – Cronaca e Memoria dello Spettacolo Milano as part of the project PRO|D|ES Danza – Promozione Digitale Danza Estesa, and EN-KNAP (Slovenia)
