No borders at all

No borders at all for the 2022 Venice Dance Biennale – Boundary-less, this the slogan chosen by Biennale Director Wayne McGregor for the current edition. 150 artists, 69 shows, 9 world premieres. Legends of international dance as well as rising stars that will show how to tear down the segmentation of arts, find formerly unthinkable spaces and means of expression and forms of art that transcend genres and media. “We are all continuum and exchange, morph and transformation, a borderless vessel of exploration and potential. Our bodies too are more transmutable than ever before as we extend ourselves into virtual worlds, transform ourselves through meditation or simply teleport for a while into the metaverse, this fantastical world where everything is possible – kind of. Today, physical borders are eroding as quickly as geographical borders are redrawn, and still the human spirit transcends itself over and again – towards a permanent state of the unfixed, the impermeable, the free. What is it, then, for an artist/an artwork to be boundary-less today? Is it expressed in the people we choose to collaborate with, the media we innovate inside, the places we work from, or the attempt to erode the categories that define us or something other? Isn’t art making, the very act of breaking boundaries and subverting barriers? Isn’t it a way of re-imagination and a new way of thinking? Art, then, is perhaps the liminal space of the in-between.”

While the live programme is the backbone of the Festival, the Biennale College residency programme is its necessary nourishment. The 2022 College class welcomed 18 young dancers and choreographers, who took classes and created their own original work. Running the classes are renowned teachers such as McGregor himself and Golden Lion-awarded Saburo Teshigawara, whose masterclass is the foundation work of the upcoming site-specific performance at the Arsenale. The two participants to the Choreography College, Edit Domoszlai and Matteo Carvone, also worked with McGregor in the exploration on liminal space – a portal, a place of transition, which inspired performance Liminal / The Garden. “Our Boundary-less Biennale Danza 2022 invites you to experience artists who are truly threshold disruptors. They operate in the liminal spaces of the in-betweens or in collaborations that are unexpected, often provocative, and profound. We welcome you into their startling worlds.”