Two young artists, Luna Cenere and Andrea Peña, are the winners of the calls for new choreographies for Italian and international artists under the age of 35. The calls, the second edition for Italy and the first for foreign countries, are part of the multi-year project of the Dance Department of La Biennale di Venezia, directed by Wayne McGregor, to support the new generations of artists.

Dancer, choreographer and performer Luna Cenere, born in 1987, who conceives the body as a landscape, an element of complex architectural compositions in space, wins the call with her project Vanishing Place. Inspired by the images of artists such as Ren Hang, Evelyn Bencicova, AdeY, “Luna Cenere – writes McGregor – continues her research on the body, posture, object and gesture, often in startling dialogue with one another. Vanishing Place, her new ‘installation’ dance work, pushes this conversation into fresh and surprising territory, probing the very nature of what it is to dance and indeed what dances of the future might become. It is minimal, questioning work and as such offers a potent contrast to the more kinetically driven experiences we offer in the Biennale Danza”.

Co-produced by La Biennale di Venezia together with Körper – National Production Center, CID – Centro internazionale della Danza, Hessishes Staatbnallet and with the support of MIC and the Cultural Institute of Köln, Vanishing Place will involve five performers – Ilaria Quaglia, Marina Bertoni, Francesca La Stella, Luca Zanni, Davide Tagliavini – to music by composer Renato Grieco.

Andrea Peña, a Colombian choreographer immigrated to Canada, together with the multidisciplinary company founded in 2014 in Montréal Andrea Peña & Artists (AP&A), wins the call with Bogota. A project that intends to explore the concepts of death and resurrection, states the choreographer “through my Colombian heritage coloured by the historical nuances of this colonized country, as a source of resilience that is deconstructed from queer, post-industrial and post-human lens”. “A radical and innovative proposal – says McGregor – that convinces in its brave and raw approach to new movement exploration and evolving hybrid forms. This is high-quality, risk-taking and experimental work that we are thrilled to nurture at Biennale Danza 2023”.

Co-produced by La Biennale di Venezia with Danse Danse and L’Agora de la danse, Bogota will be the second large-scale work conceived by the company, which will involve the dancers Francis Richard, Erin O’Loughlin, Jean Benoît Labrecque, Frédérique Rodier, Jontae McCrory, Nicholas Bellefleur, Charlie Prince; the set designer Jonathan Saucier; the composer, electronic musician and 3D sound designer Debbie Doe; the rehearsal director and researcher Helen Simard; the costume designer Polina Boltova; the film director Bobby Leon.

Vanishing Place by Luna Cenere and Bogota by Andrea Pena & Artists will have their world premiere at the 17th International Festival of Contemporary Dance of La Biennale di Venezia in July 2023.