TEATRI
RIFLESSI 10
conTact
International Performing Arts Festival
conTact
8-21 JULY 2025
ZAFFERANA ETNEA
THE FESTIVAL
Teatri Riflessi brings on Mt. Etna international works from the contemporary scene, making it a place for discussion between artists, spectators, and performing arts professionals. The project promotes contemporary dance and theatre pieces in unconventional spaces, artist residencies, and an international competition for short live performances. Since the first edition, Teatri Riflessi has been connecting a large and heterogeneous audience with contemporary art languages.
17, 18, 19 July
THE COMPETITION
The International Short Performance Competition brings to Zafferana Etnea companies from all over the world to discuss with spectators, theatre and festival directors, journalists and critics from Italy and abroad. The three days host performances, discussions, networking events, and the preview of new contemporary works.
8-21 July
THE PROGRAMME
The festival unfolds across several sections:
The 10th edition of the International Short Performance Competition;
Contemporary Landscapes, a showcase of international contemporary dance, and First Light on Mt. Etna, focused on emerging Italian choreography
Innesti, a programme of artistic residencies;
Contemporary Visions, a selection of video dance works and dance films;
Testi Riflessi, a series of conversations and literary encounters—including a section for kids;
The Youth and Citizens’ Juries, audience engagement programmes;
And a rich array of activities open to the community and aimed at enhancing and reimagining the territory.
conTact
Bringing the contemporary performing arts to the slopes of Mount Etna is, above all, an act of trust. Trust in the capacity of places to welcome new visions, and in the willingness of people to open themselves to voices that are often unexpected, at times disorienting, and certainly different.
The 2025 edition of Teatri Riflessi is dedicated to the idea of conTact—a concept that evokes surfaces, skin, a threshold between what is close and what remains distinct. Like the volcanic crust that coats the Mountain, harsh and fertile at the same time.
conTact is the way we choose to inhabit the landscape.
It is our approach to bringing the languages of contemporary performance closer to people, traversing both physical and symbolic spaces, on and off stage. It is the care—the tact—with which we cultivate relationships, so that performance does not merely mean spectacle, but becomes a space for reflection on accessibility and inclusion.
Having this in mind, the festival becomes a porous space: open to being shaped by diverse voices, aesthetics, and perspectives, restoring to the public sphere its transformative potential. It invites the public to inhabit the artistic experience without fear, with the freedom of those who discover themselves as part of a temporary, yet real, community.
In a time that often drives us towards isolation, Teatri Riflessi chooses dialogue and the plurality of languages; it embraces relationship as both a political and poetic act.
This is where we begin.
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