Franklin University Switzerland is proud to announce that Adjunct Professor Elettra Fiumi’s documentary film, Dancing Free, is premiering at the Locarno Film Festival on Friday, August 11, at 15:00 (3:00 pm) at Palazzo dei Congressi Muralto. Artistic Director Giona A. Nazarro will present the film, which tracks the first edition of the Lugano Arte e Cultura (LAC) Lugano Dance Project, a contemporary dance festival held in Lugano from May 25-29, 2022.
Produced by Fiumi Studios in co-production with Franklin University Switzerland and the Manitou Fund, thanks to Rosemary and Kevin McNeely, Dancing Free documents, following a circular structure and narrative approach, the creative processes of the artists selected to create three new choreographies for the festival. Endowed with a unique and personal artistic vision, Canadian Virginie Brunelle, Anglo-American Annie Hanauer and Swiss-German Lea Moro presented their creations as part of the first edition of the festival by being inspired by the utopian experiences of Monte Verità in the first decade of the 20th century.
Questioning the concept of an 'ideal world' in their artistic and private lives, the three artists revealed themselves to be powerful and visionary leaders but also fragile and vulnerable women. “Making Dancing Free for me meant an invitation to viewers to explore their concept of utopia,” says filmmaker Elettra Fiumi. “Personally, perfection rather than being the final step of a journey lies in the process of creation. Through this process, we immerse ourselves between our imagination and the pragmatic universe of its realization. Like my first work, Radical Landscapes, I read the present through archival materials to explore its evolution. A temporal gap that allowed me to bring to life a magical-realistic lunge into a woman’s imagination. Although the three artists have different concepts of utopia and perfection as well as dance, they have evolutions that reveal similarities in their professional and personal outcomes. Their stories, like their outlook on the world, intertwine starting from the common point of Monte Verità, a place where artists and intellectuals gathered around the charismatic figure of Hungarian choreographer Rudolf von Laban, who envisioned a dance free from the constraints of traditional doctrine.”
The screening of Dancing Free anticipates the second edition of Lugano Dance Project, which will once again be curated by Michel Gagnon and Carmelo Rifici together with Lorenzo Conti. While the first edition focused on the relationship between art, body and movement, the next festival will investigate the combination of body and architecture and will take place from June12-16, 2024 amidst the most striking places of Ticino’s architecture, including historic villas, churches and theaters. For the new edition of the festival, LAC will support the production of five choreographic creations by Cindy Van Acker (Switzerland), Rhodnie Désir (Canada), Nicola Galli (Italy), Christos Papadopoulos/Georgios Kostifakis (Greece), Ioannis Mandafounis (Switzerland) and the Dresden Frankfurt Dance Company (Germany).
We are fortunate to have such inspiring faculty as Professor Fiumi and such beautiful Ticinese architecture as part of our Franklin community. We invite everyone to come support the Dancing Free film premiere and enjoy the artistic brilliance that has emerged from the dancers’ and filmmaker’s imaginations and take in the Locarno lakeside architecture at the famous Locarno Film Festival on August 11th.