REGGIO EMILIA – 10-12 JUNE 2022

An Ideal City explores the ideal practices for the linking of dance and cityscape.

Eight 8 MicroDances will be performed in Reggio Emilia along a path that links its historic city center both physically and symbolically with the new area of urban renewal and development known as Parco Innovazione, the former industrial area previously occupied by Officine Meccaniche Reggiane. The route winds through the city’s pedestrian island with locations to stop and witness the performances on a path that takes around an hour and a half to complete.

For two days (10 and 12 June), these MicroDances will be staged in places of strategic significance and areas of passage between the town center and its outskirts on a journey to rediscovering and redefining Reggio Emilia’s social, cultural, and historical heritage of the past and present.
The presentation throughout the city is at the disposal of both casual audiences that encounter the performances by chance and those who decide to follow its seven itineraries and discover how dance suits the city’s locations of greatest social, historical, and future relevance.

The Project combines the languages of dance and public art in developing its ideal of the inclusive, dynamic, and experimental city, one that takes part by placing all its various forms of energy into relationship and working for a shared objective. No city is ever ideal, however: each is real and keeps growing also in the circulation of knowledge and experiences among its citizens, especially those who consider the dimension of the community and shared space a precious asset. With this aspiration, An Ideal City – Reggio Emilia decided to create a network di collaboration with institutional partners, associations, and local actors and actresses to animate the city’s social and cultural life in different ways.

In its urban version, An Ideal City involves the reenactment of the MicroDances with participation from the Peri-Merulo Conservatory, the K-Lab community tailory, the SemiLiberi social carpentry shop set up inside a prison by Cooperativa L’Ovile and the Via Roma Citizens’ Committee in creating essential parts of performance stage design and choreography and others required for the enjoyment of the city’s events and cultural heritage by the public at large.

In some cases, co-productions will give life to works of their own to be witnessed by the public first throughout the event’s duration and then as part of the newly-created heritage of the city and the partners involved.

Costanza Meli
curator