Projects list

List of projects

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NATIONAL ACADEMY OF BALLET in ROME
http://www.accademianazionaledanza.it'

Historic Dances Project
Research on “Dances at the Italian Courts” between the Humanistic Age and the Renaissance
Historic Dances are the dances that were popular in the European courts and society from the 15th century onwards. For centuries they have had the social function of fostering understanding and solidarity between members of similar groups of people, regulating their behaviour and fashions and teaching respect and interpersonal courtesy by means of a collective light-hearted activity. The teachers of dancing and music managed to absorb the regional aspects of local folk culture and the many collective rituals, codifying them into a common European and Mediterranean tradition and thus already creating "unity in diversity".
The project aims to analyse dances and ballets, like the "Saltarello", the "Low Dances", Pavanes and Galliards, from the 15th century to the late 16th century.
Objectives:
Cultural exchanges of research and performance staging with countries with many strong historic dance traditions, like France and Spain.

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Folk Dances Project
A study of Italian folk dances as expressed in the “Tarantella”. Historical research into their origins and cultural parallels with Greek folk dances.
Objectives:
The project aims to develop interest in folk dances through the activities of teaching and musical analysis connected with the development of the Italian ballet heritage. This research into relations with other cultural traditions, like those of Greece, comes from the desire not to remain an isolated area, but instead to promote exchanges between other artistic and cultural situations in Italy and abroad and, in particular, in the area of the Mediterranean.

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Fedro Project
Diary of an exile
It describes the modern journey of an exile who is forced by war to leave his country and wanders around the Mediterranean in search of a new land to live in.
Interpreted by
Members of the ALI Onlus Youth Association, composed of young people born in Italy to immigrant parents and young Italians studying at the National Academy of Ballet.
Main objectives:
The construction of an artistic and pedagogical course of tuition based on theatre laboratory activities – ballet, music, visual arts and theatrical events and performances that, starting out from the artistic forms of expression typical of urban culture, can help adolescents and young people create a symbolic meaning around their problem-linked experiences and promote a dialogue and constructive way of life between people from different cultures and different social conditions. Experiments in the shared programme will be carried out to discover whether it is possible to create, through a particular artistic language, a limited environment, capable of constructive relations with others. It should be perceived as a resource for individual and social growth that aims to meet the needs of adolescents and young people and lay down the basis of trustworthy relationships. Tuition in artistic subjects therefore can become an area where democratic cohabitation and new citizenship can be learnt and experimented in the knowledge that intercultural education gives additional strength to the meaning of democracy.
Recipients:
Young adolescents from different countries and cultures resident in the territory of the City Council of Rome, integrated with professional artists from Italy and abroad.

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Das Project
Ballet at School
Preparatory Ballet Courses in Primary Schools, a two-year project in collaboration with the City Council of Rome Office for policies for children and families.
The courses are designed for:
Children in the 1st to 4th year Primary School classes in the City Council of Rome; the course is divided into two sectors or levels (1st level 6-7 year-olds, 2nd level 8-9 year-olds).
Course Structure:
The courses are held twice a week with each lesson lasting for an hour and a half. Each teacher holds 4 courses for a total of 12 hours a week. Each course can take a maximum of 20 students.
Didactic programme of the course and objectives:
Didactic programme of the course and objectives: The aim behind the Preparatory course is to help children understand themselves better, teaching them to move in a correct and conscious way and above all discover the structure of their bodies. This improves posture and eventually produces the right muscular development that will help them strengthen the position acquired and gradually allow them to carry out more complex movements. Part of the course concentrates on such subjects as the study of weight, the field of vision, space and energy, as well as the analysis of the child’s personal relations with these elements and their comparison with others.
We believe that it is most important to stress that this tuitional-social aspect of ballet lessons gives the child many opportunities to compare himself with others. The child is thus free to follow several different areas: he can be instructed by the teacher along with the rest of the class or lead other children with his own ideas, work alone to investigate and discover his body or carry out the same exercise with a companion. When working in pairs children can also try to collaborate on an equal level with their partners in order to arrive at a common end or alternatively create a leading role. An experience creating such complete relationships with others helps them to develop proper social relationships and therefore forms a fertile ground for cultivating opinions, love, thought and language. A lack of social relations can lead to a lack of sensitive maturity, which means that children tend to consider others as a difficult entity, regarding them with distrust and certainly not an eventual friend.
In general the lessons progress from teaching the children to use the individual parts of their bodies to the whole body and from individual dancing to group ballet. The various forms of contact that can often take place during the exercises transforms many bodies into a single body, thus allowing the children to rediscover the fundamental importance of touch as they gradually gain more experience in movement and allowing them to reutilise what is the first instrument they possess for relating to the external world.
Our lessons dedicated to the study of the world of sound and music form a very important part of the courses, not only acting as a fundamental component in the child's future training in the study of ballet, but also as an educational aid. Music is in fact considered a privileged instrument in permanent education and particularly effective if it is linked with games and movement. Several exercises have therefore been chosen that through physical experience encourage the children to listen and acquire the skills of recognising the basic components behind each sound, favouring a refinement of the corporal movement and their musical incentives.

First stage (6-7 year-olds)
• Warm-up
• Knowledge of the body
• Exercises in the study of respiration
• Exercises for the spinal column
• Movements of the segments of the body
• Perception of the working of the muscles
• Introduction to the study of sounds and rhythm
• Study of weight
• Study of space
• Study of the field of vision
• Study of energy
• Study of comportment
• Movements of the segments of the body
• Study of battements

Second stage (8-9 year-olds)
• Warm-up
• Perception of the working of the muscles
• Study of sounds and rhythm
• Study of the field of vision
• Study of weight
• Study of energy
• Study of comportment
• Exercises for the external rotation of the hips
• Exercises on the floor at the bar
• Exercises in technique, standing
• Study of sounds and rhythm
• Study of the field of vision
• Study of weight
• Study of comportment

At the end of each scholastic year students are invited to organise a performance to present choreography prepared during the course and suited to their age group. Students can also help to prepare the simple costumes required for the staging of the performance.



HIGHER INSTITUTE FOR ARTISTIC INDUSTRIES (ISIA) of FLORENCE
http://www.isiadesign.fi.it'

"Living in (the) Mediterranean" Exhibition - Florence, July 5th-13th 2007
The exhibition presents the results of the Euromedsys Common Market project carried out in the sphere of the IIIB Medocc Interregional Programme.
Prototypes were carried out inspired by the definition of the Living in the Mediterranean Manifesto - based on the key words: The renewal of tradition / Development with nature / Meeting among different opinions / Production as an identity / Conjuring up meanings - with the idea of expressing the contents of the Manifesto. The prototypes were the result of couplings-exchanges between business enterprises and designers from either side of the Mediterranean and a workshop on Mediterranean-ceramics-foodstuffs, with the participation of five schools, held at Scusse in Tunisia. A network of schools, service structures and business enterprises that identify themselves with the contents of the Living in the Mediterranean Manifesto was presented at the Exhibition. - Partner Regions: Region of Tuscany, Region of Campania, Région Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur, Region of Andalucia, Gouvernorat de Sousse, Ministère de l'Aménagement du Territoire et de l'Environnement, Région Tanger Tétouan.
- Partner Schools: Degree Course in Industrial Design, University of Florence, Higher Institute of Industrial Arts (ISIA) in Florence, Degree Course in Industrial Design, Second University of Naples, Ecole des Beaux Arts de Marseille, Institut des Beaux Arts, Université de Sousse.
- Designers: Riccardo Dalisi, Adriano Design, Mehdi Dellagi with Elettra Brancolini, Farbrice Faber, Khadija Kabbaj, Cherif, Laetitia Sellier, Sandrine Clavel, Geraldine Petit, Donatella Margarita, Roberto Bottiglieri, Bruno Cimmino.
- Students: Samuele Anzellotti, Marwa Baccouche, Michela Bidetti, Amel Ben Belgacem, Mohamed Romdhani, Elena Laudante, Fadhel Naija, Félix Richard, Gennaro Saiano, Ferdinando Mari, Tabel Barboura, Pasquale Salzillo, Guido Garotti, LN Boul, Ramzi Mehrez, Filippo Rossi, Carla Martino, Raphael Bertrand.
- Business enterprises: Bardi (Quarrata -Tuscany), Housegarden (Quarrata - Tuscany), Francesco Del Re (Tavernelle - Tuscany), Macaedis (Macael, Almeria), Terre d'Oc (Lanuéjols - Languedoc), Bernex (Pays d'Aubagne), Craftsmen in ceramics from Mouknine.
- Curators of the exhibition: Mario Buono and Giuseppe Lotti in collaboration with Ilaria Bedeschi and Caterina Fiorentino.
- Exhibition arrangement project: Ilaria Bedeschi, Michela Bidetti, Giuseppe Lotti, Gloria Refini, Laura Sandroni.
- Video project: Stefano Fomasi - Fake Factory.














ACADEMY of FINE ARTS of CATANIA
http://www.accademiadicatania.it'

AFAMSIS
The AFAM Students Informative System is a software platform created to support the operational requirements of the teaching organisation and based on the new organisational systems now being tested in the AFAM department. It was designed by the Academy of Fine Arts of Catania in collaboration with the Department of Mathematics and Computer Systems of the Faculty of Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences at the University of Catania.
This software component was carried out for administrative purposes, using a Multi-platform solution with basic Opensource architecture to object technology, and contains over 8000 modules (programmes, sub-programmes, forms, etc.).
The software component for use on the web was carried out in Mysql/PHP ambient.
AFAMSIS is divided into the following main sub-systems:
- Pre-academic diploma: first and second level diploma courses
- Post-academic diploma: post-diploma trainee courses, doctorates in research, schools of specialisation, specialisation courses and State examinations
- Data bank consultation: giving vision only access to the data within the system
- Self-service: student dedicated services with automatic web connected desk
- Tuition: services dedicated to training possibilities
Apart from the fact that most of the system is able to offer data management for several Institutions at the same time, one of its most interesting characteristics is the special care given the software at its realisation stage, in order to anticipate any future changes in the activities it supports and thus giving the user a maximum independence.

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The continuous image
Condi-vision
"The continuous image" show is the result of a simple condi-vision, without any pretensions, expectations or previsions. After Massimo Rossi (video maker and Digital Video teacher) and I, Roberta Baldaro (photographer and, more recently, video maker), had looked at the videos carried out by the students from the two Academies of Fine Arts (the "Pietro Vanucci" of Perugia and the Academy of Catania) and considered their ideas, languages and effective output, we decided to collect up this material and video-project it to a larger public, in other words, outside the University world.
A festival of video art, open to all types of spectator and not just reserved for the experts (and in an exclusive formula for regular visitors to art galleries and museums of contemporary art), would allow these artistic productions to receive unconditioned criticism from the public as well as from independent and experimental cinema, especially if we remember that this art is often confused with medium and short film clips.\\ Debut
"The continuous image" festival was held on June 13th, 14th and 15th 2006 at the Mammut of Catania (restaurant, wine bar and art gallery), where I was personally organising contemporary art events in that period. After I had written out the project, chosen the dates and requested sponsorship from the Academies of Catania and Perugia, in the three months that followed, Massimo Rossi and I managed to collect up all the original video material, technical information and critical notes (in many cases specially written), page up the invitations, send off the press releases and announcements to magazines, as well as publish a page on the Mammut web site.
The festival
Held over a period of three evenings (projections from 8-10pm with a pause in the middle), the programme offered 43 videos by 31 authors, who included 27 students, 2 teachers and 1 collective (not in the programme). A three day non-stop parade of projections, illustrated by a printed programme for the interested, critical and dynamic public in the hall: some people took notes (like Prof. Alberto Balletti), others asked if they could have the material for teaching purposes (like Prof. Gianluca Lombardo), others again discovered "new talents" (like gallery owner Rosa Anna Musumeci), while others praised our efforts and wanted to see "everything" all over again.
The continuous image tour
The festival made a second appearance at the Rockin’Umbria in Perugia on June 21st and 22nd 2006, where this mix of video art and a rock concert unexpectedly but suggestively blended together...
The festival's third appearance came about thanks to the fact that Prof. Alberto Balletti took notes during the projections at the Mammut. An artist and member of the De Portesio Group, Balletti also organised and curated the Foundation's art events and asked Massimo and I to continue the festival at its headquarters at San Felice del Benaco (BS), while the “Urban Body” exhibition of graphic art was on display.
Although time was limited, the organisation worked perfectly: a month later “Urban Body” offered us three dates - August 25th, 26th and 27th - for the “Shortvideo Convention” to be held during the exhibition. Apart from the “complete packet” of videos from Catania and Perugia, this would also host works from the Academies of Fine Arts of Milan and Venice with their respective approval, so that the vidoes now numbered 80 and a colour catalogue was also published. Invited by the De Portesio Foundation in our capacity as curators, Massimo Rossi and I, along with Angelo Spina, one of the video makers from Catania (employed as a photographer for the event), joined up with Alberto Balletti to present the respective sections of video artists.
Urban Body - Shotvideo Convention
The video productions by the students from the Academies of Fine Arts of Milan, Venice, Perugia and Catania presented noticeable stylistic differences, which were not without social, cultural and (dare I say it) geographic conditioning.
The work from Milan stood out for its technical quality, good mounting and graphic elaboration skills, dominated by a dry language without any frills. Although the contents of the videos proposed by Milan were extreme, cynical, tortuous and often elusive, they were still attractive, perhaps precisely for their ephemeral narrative meaning.
Venice offered a stratified vision, divided up into different levels: it was almost as if something came between the observer and the Venetian videos and made enjoyment more difficult, like looking across a “sheet of lagoon water”, in both their aesthetic and their purely conceptual meanings. The Venetian videos were directed towards dilating time and complex reasoning, yet entrusted to (and relieved by) a purposely-accentuated chromatics that reacted to this opaque-like effect.
Perugia proposals were multicoloured in style: sometimes playful, at other times composed. The videos from Perugia concentrated on detail, developing the subject matter while avoiding rhetoric and examined the aesthetic results more than the actual message (setting, mounting, audio, post-production), almost suggesting a second reading whose answer lay hidden somewhere inside the video.
Catania described even more fragmented and fragmentary situations, full of contradictions, in its videos: irony and self-pity, sarcasm and victimisation, emancipation and castration coexist as natural elements within the city itself.
Undoubtedly the critical significance behind the productions from Catania aims to judge and propose itself as a real attack on the obvious. The greatest poetical vein of these artists is instead dedicated to refined intimist explorations that allow a great freedom of personal digression. The most burning questions were instead dealt with without beating about the bush, without any censorship so that their direct impact on the public was painful and tragic.
The large number of visitors, the quality of the videos shown and the understanding reached between the organisers and curators allow us to hope that this collaboration between the various Academies, the De Portesio Group and the “Cineforum Feliciano” (film club, curator of the video arrangement and collaborator of the Foundation) will probably continue in the future.
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Ballet - Media - Sicily
Interactive and Multi-Disciplinary Video-Dance Platform

Majazé – Cultural Warehouse, Catania
May 4th-5th 2007
Promotor: Majazé – Cultural Warehouse Catania

Majazé (meaning storehouse for various goods in the Sicilian dialect), is a warehouse that offers an exchange of art and culture. It is an independent structure that has been working on the Sicilian territory since 2002 and that creates interaction networks on an international level.
Originally an old orange warehouse, Majazé makes its spaces, skills and understanding available for artists and cultural operators so that they can learn, carry out research, experiment and develop projects in suitable conditions for carrying out their creative work, thus helping young talents and the surrounding territory.
Training
The A.C.T. Choreographic and Theatrical Atelier is one of the sections in the Majazé activity and aimed for professionals and amateurs wanting to carry out more specialised studies in scenic arts and offers students an international context because it permits them to work alongside the various artists and teachers of different disciplinary origins who are invited to participate. Moreover Majazé hosts several other courses that form the basis of its daily activity.
Majazé offers tutoring for training courses and stages and awards a scholarship in performing arts, related to the theatre and ballet, and another for a "Specialisation course in Cultural Project management", in collaboration with the Fitzcarraldo Foundation of Turin. It also accepts students interested in training and vocational guidance for its "Master Courses in non-verbal Communication and Languages: Psychomotion, Musical therapy and Performance" organised by the CA' Foscari University in Venice and the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of Catania.
Research and Experimentation
The small guest house available on a periodic or permanent basis for artists and operators inside the Majazé warehouse, makes it possible to host artistic residencies before / after productions and tuition.
These artistic residencies allow the artists involved and the Majazé structure to get to know each other, meet, carry out research and experiment together or with the public, and therefore give the latter a chance to express its opinions on the work in progress, a laboratory/workshop product or an artist's research. It thus makes their artistic progress easier to follow, creating a relationship of direct exchange and giving greater value to the creative elements behind the productive strategy that are not secondary to the finished product.
Project Development
Majazé hosts the theatre dance Company MotoMimetico which permanently works and produces its productions inside the structure, guaranteeing visibility and work of quality; it is also the official headquarters for LIACOS – the Free Association of Sicilian Choreographers and for FATTIDARTE, a collective of young contemporary student artists at the Academy of Fine Arts of Catania; it boasts collaboration with many other companies, associations, etc., such as the Carambole theatre dance Company from Zurich, the Ouragan Workshop from Palermo, the State 114 Theatre Company from Catania, the IXKIZIT - Joel Borges Company, the Don't Ask The Blond – Project, the Teatro Agricolo Company, the Neo Tango Cultural Association, CaneCapovolto, Cyberzone, the Argomm Teatro Company of Milan, the Puntozero Company, Centro Pilates, the Gabriel Marcel Cultural Association, the ORFF Schulwerk in Italy, and the Acquaterra Association. Partners who have financed some of the activities include the City Council and Province of Catania and the Region of Sicily.
Majazé has carried out an Archive of International Video-Dance that can now be consulted thanks to the “Video Dance Film Fest 2005”, the first international video dance festival organised by the City of Catania, in collaboration with The Place of London and Dance On Screen, and in partnership with the Foundation Rome Europe. The archives preserve Video Dance productions from various parts of the world and are continuously up-dated.
Thanks to the recent restructuring works, Majazé now possesses an internal Risto Bar, the commercial heart of the enterprise as well as an active place for an exchange of different culinary cultures. Catering and performances often become one in this area and give Majazé's identity a unique flavour and aspect.

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manUFatto (Handmade)
The on-site Manufatto or Handmade Workshop proposes the Park for Art area at Cancelli di Foligno (PG) as a source and inspiration for contemporary creativity connected with the theme of artistic landscape design. The summer residence and workshop project is addressed to young artists/students in their final year, to graduates, or experts in the subject from Academies/Universities. It will be held in the territory of Foligno in the huge area of the Park for Art at Cancelli di Foligno (PG) in Umbria, an area of great rural and naturalistic interest that has now been defined and normed by the town-planning scheme in force. An art/landscape/nature project here has been planned since the 1980's and now that the plans are being compiled for the park's definite recovery, there is also a desire to construct a new cultural programme. An equally important objective is that of creating instruments of comparison, subject matter and research with young people. Artist Hidetoshi Nagasawa will be the tutor of the laboratory activities in this interesting exchange and will work with 15 students on a subject linked to landscape/art/nature/architecture. The young artists will stay on the sites mentioned above for 8 days, from July 15th to 22nd, and will receive specific tuition both in the artistic laboratory and at the seminars carried out by artists/critics/historians/curators, who will offer further specialisation on themes linked to the contemporary system of art in Umbria and the history of various places in the area. The extra activities surrounding artist Nagasawa's course will contribute towards the construction of a territorial network of activity that shares the aims of the Umbrian system of contemporary art.