Camilla Rizzi was a guest of the Beijing Dance Festival in Hong Kong (China), as young professional/curator, in July 2019, together with Gerarda Ventura, artistic director of Anghiari Dance Hub.
Camilla was able to take part in the Festival, meet with Asian and international professionals and explore aspects related to the audience, the type of programming proposed and the management model used by the Festival.
Camilla was previously hosted in Italy at Interplay Festival, in May 2019, during the weekend dedicated to Asian shows and meetings with foreign professionals.
The passion and dedication that all the festival staff revealed in creating this great event are certainly positive and admirable: the artistic director of the festival, Willy Tsao, presented every single performance and held all the meetings, acknowledging a very broad knowledge of the Chinese dance scene. His words and way of doing leaked love towards his work and towards art.
Moreover, everyone, from volunteers to management and production managers, has proved to be very helpful and attentive to the needs of operators, artists and audience, as well as being always present and participating in the activities. Details that make the difference.
The Chinese choreographers, to the question “What is your relationship with dramaturgy?” responded by referring to the drama, to the emotional part of the performances, demonstrating that probably the word dramaturgy has not yet become part of their dance vocabulary.
But we must not think that this implies that Chinese dance is “worse” than the European one: surely our continent has a history of important dance that has laid the foundations for what is the current landscape; however China, that up to thirty years ago would never have been able to stage the shows presented today at the festival, is very quickly recovering the “lost time” with great care and devotion.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in a decade the Chinese festivals became the focal point of international contemporary dance, also due to the large number of structures available to them.
