Over ten days of performances will bring life to theatres, squares, museums, and unconventional venues across the city, with around 40 events featuring 17 companies from just as many countries. Oriente Occidente Dance Festival celebrates its 45th anniversary by returning to the body — especially the ones that are often overlooked, underrepresented, or entirely absent. And in that absence, it rediscovers the power of presence.
After a cycle dedicated to the Mediterranean, Oriente Occidente shifts its focus from geopolitical coordinates to human geographies. The new three-year project, Corpi Assenti (Absent Bodies), marks the beginning of a new chapter of artistic and social inquiry. It invites us to look more closely at what usually remains hidden, giving space to stories that are rarely told.
From September 3 to 13, the festival takes over Rovereto’s theatres, museums, and public spaces, launching a new triennial program that both continues and reinvents its mission: to look at the world through a fresh, attentive lens, one shaped by art, dance, and culture, and to seek out ways of understanding that go beyond simplistic or polarized narratives.
Through performances, installations, talks, and moments of dialogue, Oriente Occidente becomes a space for expression and exchange, a place where community is built through a shared commitment to complexity and multiplicity. It aims to give voice to realities that often go unheard and to imagine alternatives to dominant narratives. In doing so, absence is transformed into presence, a charged emptiness, a silence that speaks volumes.
Once again this year, the program offers a rich mix of acclaimed shows, free events, thought-provoking conversations, and encounters between people and perspectives from across the globe. As always, the invitation is to engage in a true meeting of cultures.
The programming of Oriente Occidente unfolds through approaches and perspectives that expand the range of possible narratives, make room for diverse identities, and seek out alternatives to dominant representations. These choices give depth and meaning to the title Absent Bodies, offering ways of navigating the festival’s rich and varied landscape of performances, events, and aesthetics. It’s a curatorial vision that embraces complexity and invites multiple interpretations, a map for exploring difference rather than reducing it.
A root anchors a plant to the ground and allows it to draw nourishment. It’s the origin of everything, the foundation. It tells us where we come from. There are places in the world where these roots have been violated, where communities have endured — and in many cases still endure — colonization, where people are forced to defend their rights, assert their existence, and protect the land they know intimately and hold in deep respect. Oriente Occidente approaches this reality through Nambi. The African Shieldmaidens, a powerful work by Ugandan company Batalo East, led by choreographer Nabaggala Lilian Maximillian. The piece celebrates the strength of African women who defied traditional gender roles to protect their communities and their homelands (September 10, 8:30 PM, Teatro Zandonai). From a different corner of the world comes Último Helecho, a deeply poetic and politically resonant piece rooted in Argentinian tradition and intertwined with baroque culture. The work is the latest creation by François Chaignaud, a beloved guest of the 2023 edition, in collaboration with director Nina Laisné and Nadia Larcher, a standout voice in Buenos Aires’ folk and experimental music scene, making her Italian debut at Oriente Occidente (September 12, 8:30 PM, Teatro Zandonai). Drawing on the life, art, and inner world of Frida Kahlo is The Fridas, a new piece by Sofia Nappi, recently named associate artist of Oriente Occidente. Inspired by The Two Fridas, Kahlo’s iconic self-portrait that powerfully expresses the multiplicity of identity, Nappi invites two remarkable performers to challenge traditional ideas of masculinity and open up space for a broader, more inclusive understanding of the self (September 12, 7:30 PM and 9 PM, Mart).
An ecosystem is a complex, living web of relationships, exchanges, and interdependencies. It’s a collective organism where nature, bodies, communities, gestures, and landscapes continuously shape one another. An ecosystem seeks a dynamic balance among diverse elements, evolving through time. It embodies alliances, between human and non-human beings, between memory and the present, between tradition and the future. This idea comes to life through three distinct performances, each with its own language, origin, and vision. Premiering in Rovereto, Birdsong by Salvo Lombardo, associate artist of Oriente Occidente, draws inspiration from ancient sound codes used to call birds, blending folk traditions with hunting techniques. Here, the focus shifts away from the act of hunting to explore the potential for connection between human and non-human worlds. Performed by two dancers using their voices and bodies, the work becomes a subtle, resonant form of dialogue with nature (September 7, 8:30 PM, Auditorium Melotti, world premiere). With Danzas Climáticas (September 9, 8:30 PM, Auditorium Melotti), artist and activist Amanda Piña delves into decolonial thinking and ecological crisis. Dance becomes ritual, a way to reconnect with ancestral knowledge that offers radical alternatives to dominant ideas of progress. Through movement, the body is reimagined as a vessel of the Earth’s ecological memory, keeper of stories, rhythms, and resistance. In Yé!, Guinea’s Circus Baobab, led by Kerfalla Camara, confronts the fragile balance between development and survival, tradition and future. Through breathtaking acrobatics and powerful visual storytelling, the piece tells a story of contemporary Africa, where the ecosystem is not only environmental, but deeply social. It’s a poetic reckoning with environmental catastrophe, human pyramids rising like monuments to resilience, and a reminder that if there’s anything that can save us, it’s us: our capacity for relationship, for awareness, and for questioning how we live on and with the Earth. Together, these three works offer a plural, embodied reflection on what it means to be part of an ecosystem, an invitation to recognize our interdependence, reimagine our connection to the natural world, and return center stage to the bodies — human and non-human — that inhabit this planet (September 13, 8:30 PM, Auditorium Melotti).
In music, dissonance arises when two or more sounds clash, creating tension and a sense of instability. But beyond its technical meaning, dissonance can also signal disruption, a break from the expected, a shift in perspective that unsettles the familiar and opens up new paths. It’s through these fractures that new ways of understanding and transformation can emerge. This spirit of dissonance runs through four performances in this year’s program. Monument 0.10: The Living Monument is the latest work by Eszter Salamon, created for Norway’s national contemporary dance company, Carte Blanche, and presented in Italy for the first time. Fourteen performers give life to a visionary piece that challenges the traditional notion of the monument as something solid, permanent, and celebratory. In a world of shifting fabrics, vivid colors, and changing landscapes, the idea of a monument becomes fluid not standing against time, but moving through it (September 6, 8 PM, Teatro Zandonai). In Dies Irae, choreographer Gloria Dorliguzzo brings to the stage a visceral, ritualistic performance set to the raw, forceful music of Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya. The piece features a group of non-professional women from a workshop held in the days leading up to the Festival. Here, the stage becomes a space for liberation and protest, where the body becomes a tool of collective resistance (September 8, 6 PM, MoM). Dalila Belaza, a French-Algerian choreographer, also returns with a bold new work. Orage, performed to live music by French rock guitarist Serge Teyssot-Gay, is stripped-down and radical in its simplicity. Without theatrical embellishments, it places a single body on stage, grappling to give shape to chaos (September 8, 8:30 PM, Teatro Zandonai). Lastly, in the Italian premiere of Screensaver Series, choreographer Neve Harrington presents a hypnotic, accessible, and sensory work performed by five dancers. Echoing the quiet rhythm of a screensaver, the performance invites audiences to observe from different angles, move freely, sit or stand wherever they choose. Designed as a "relaxed performance," it creates space for individual experience within a shared environment (September 10, 6 PM and 10 PM, MoM).
Revisiting the classics to rewrite the present through their universal language: no repertoire is untouchable. This is the idea behind "passato contemporaneo" ("contemporary past"), a thematic strand of Oriente Occidente that treats the past not as something static, but as living material to be crossed, disrupted, and reimagined. Three performances draw from tradition, giving it the urgency and relevance of the present. In Somewhere (September 5, 8:30 PM, Auditorium Melotti, European premiere), choreographer Yue Yin blends contemporary dance with the rich vocabulary of classical Chinese movement. Inspired by the five elements of the I Ching root, wood, water, metal, fire, she crafts a dynamic physical score that moves fluidly between ancient philosophy and modern expression, breathing new energy into Eastern spirituality. With Récital (September 11, 6 PM and 9 PM, Mart), François Chaignaud conjures the rebellious spirit of Isadora Duncan, the pioneer of modern dance. It’s a sensual and layered journey through memory and embodiment, where boundaries between masculine and feminine dissolve, leaving space for transformation and fluid identity. Making her Italian debut, Japanese artist Yoko Omori, associate artist of Oriente Occidente, presents A Park + Tuonelan (September 11, 8:30 PM, Auditorium Melotti), an evening that brings together her first group piece with a solo performed by Omori herself. Fusing elements from classical repertoire with her unique choreographic voice, Omori creates a powerful synthesis of tradition and the aesthetics of urban street culture rewriting the past through the lens of the now.
For many editions now, Oriente Occidente has expanded beyond the stage, bringing circus, urban dance, and performance art into public spaces cultivating a deeper, more genuine connection between the city and the people who move through it. In 2025, the Festival’s “off” program becomes part of a broader celebration involving the entire city: the Centennial of the Peace Bell, Maria Dolens. Kicking off both the outdoor program and the Festival itself is Yue Yin Dance Company. With an excerpt from the piece that will premiere on stage the following evening, the performance offers a poetic meeting of cultures: drawing from her Chinese heritage and classical tradition, choreographer Yue Yin blends this ancient knowledge with the countercultures of the U.S., where she grew up and now lives (September 4, 6 PM, Piazza delle Erbe). As always, Oriente Occidente brings circus to the streets. This year features a mesmerizing and tender performance by Belgian company Cie des Chaussons Rouges, mixing balance, acrobatics, and tightrope walking in a captivating show (September 5, 6 PM, Piazza Caduti sul Lavoro). And for those seeking pure spectacle, the artists of Circus Baobab will electrify the city center with an explosive experience of human pyramids, humor, physicality, and aerial feats that launch bodies up to seven meters into the air (September 12, 6 PM, Piazza Urban City). The outdoor program also includes the launch of a new artistic residency by the French-South African company Collective/less, led by Robin Lamothe. The group will spend several weeks in Rovereto developing elsewhere is forward, a piece aimed at younger audiences that explores the body as a tool for social cohesion. The work draws on the healing dances of the San people of Botswana — collective rituals of renewal where the body becomes a vessel of memory, exchange, and resilience (September 6, 10:30 AM, Fossato del Castello di Rovereto, MITAG – Italian War History Museum). The company’s dancers, members of the San community, will also offer audiences a unique opportunity to engage with their traditional practices through San Culture Unveiled: Stories, Art, and Identity, a special moment dedicated to sharing the roots and meanings behind their dance and cultural heritage (September 5, 9:30 PM, MoM). Finally, Amanda Piña brings a second work to Rovereto: To Bloom, a performance centered on water and our relationship with this essential element (September 6, 6 PM, Piazza del Mart). True to the ethos of the Mexican-Chilean artist based in Austria, To Bloom weaves ecological thought with embodied practice. Sharing the stage with Piña’s company will be students from SummerLab, organized at Oriente Occidente Studio by Lost Movement and ArteMente, as well as young dancers from Trento’s Liceo Coreutico, who will participate in workshops led by Piña herself. OO Off 2025 invites everyone to meet dance where life happens in the open air, in the shared spaces of the city, in the rhythms of everyday movement.
Three special events enrich the 2025 programme. The first, in collaboration with MUSE – the Science Museum of Trento, takes place within its exhibition spaces starting 3 September. The School of Mountains and Waters, conceived by choreographer and researcher Amanda Piña, is a project that weaves together Indigenous knowledge, scientific research, and performance to question the colonial notion of the human being as separate from the environment. Developed in collaboration with MUSE, the project includes installations, site-specific performances, and a participatory path open to individuals aged 18 to 65, invited to apply through an open call available on the Oriente Occidente and MUSE websites, with a deadline of 3 August. The “school” unfolds inside the Museum from 3 to 5 September (preceded by a preliminary meeting on 2 September), transforming the museum’s spaces into places of listening and relationship-building. A video installation, Agua es Futuro, opens up new perspectives on the connection between human bodies, water, and land, while dance interventions amplify its sensory and symbolic dimensions. The Mountain Talks, a series of encounters with artists, activists, and scientists, open to the participants selected through the open call, invite a rethinking of our relationship with nature and knowledge, through a decolonial and ecological lens. The programme culminates on Sunday 7 September at 11:00 at MUSE with Mountains in Resistance, a performative walk open to the public that winds around the museum an embodied outcome of the participatory laboratory. On stage: a temporary community of artists, citizens, scholars, and activists who, through ritual form, share the stories, insights, and connections born from direct contact with the mountains and waters shaping our landscapes. A collective act that turns walking into a sensitive practice of listening and transformation. The second special event of the 45th Oriente Occidente centres around Marcos Morau, intersecting both the SummerLab, the training programme promoted by Lost Movement and ArteMente hosted at Oriente Occidente Studio in the weeks leading up to the Festival, and the Linguaggi series. A longstanding presence at the Festival, Morau has developed a decade-long relationship of mutual trust and creative exchange with Rovereto, becoming one of the most influential voices on the international contemporary performance scene. In this edition, La Veronal, the collective led by the Spanish choreographer, will lead a choreographic workshop for the students of SummerLab based on Sonoma, the celebrated piece co-produced by Oriente Occidente and premiered in Rovereto in 2020. The young dancers’ training will culminate in a public sharing of an excerpt from Sonoma, presented in the Mart foyer on 13 September at 17:00. Immediately following, at 18:00 in the Mart conference room, a conversation between Marcos Morau and Marilù Buzzi, editor of Danza&Danza, will trace the artist’s career, his bond with the Festival, future projects, and his deep connection with the world of cinema. In connection with this dialogue, a screening of Carlos Marqués-Marcet’s feature film Polvo serán, for which Morau choreographed the movement direction, is scheduled on 12 September as part of the Linguaggi series. The film received a Goya nomination for Best Actor (Alfredo Castro) and won Best Actress at the Rome Film Festival for Ángela Molina. Lastly, among the special events of this 45th edition, Oriente Occidente will host on 13 September at 10:30 the presentation of the 21st Annual Federculture Report 2025, titled Impresa Cultura, dedicated to the theme of cultural tourism: a valuable opportunity for exchange and dialogue among local and national professionals in the cultural and tourism sectors.
Our worldviews are shaped by the stories we’ve heard and by those we haven’t. Some narratives are given priority, while others are silenced. Yet all of them, especially the ones erased, shape our perspective, model our imagination, and define what we believe is possible. This is the premise behind Storie assenti (Absent stories), the title of the 2025 edition of Linguaggi, the long-running series of talks that accompanies the programme of Oriente Occidente Dance Festival. This year, Linguaggi ventures into what is missing. It does so through stories because every story is a story of bodies, and both telling and listening are deeply political acts. The 2025 edition invites us to reflect on what is left unsaid, what frightens us, what we collectively avoid, who is not heard, and what remains on the margins. From prisons to global conflicts, from male identities to colonial legacies, the series explores narratives that concern us, that cut through us, that change us. Stories of bodies, absences, denied possibilities and the urgent construction of new truths. The first event, Stories from Inside, takes place on 4 September at 20:30 at Mart: Mauro Pescio brings to the stage This is not the story of a hero, a live reading from his podcast Io ero il milanese, followed by the presentation of the Italian prison report by the Antigone Association, with a conversation between Ornella Favero and Mauro Pescio. On 6 September at 18 at Smartlab, Stories from Men takes a sharp and ironic look at male identity with Romanzo di un maschio, a talk by the Eterobasiche, presented in collaboration with Cooperativa Smart. At 18 on 7 September, inside the Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra, Colonial Stories addresses Italy’s historical amnesia around its colonial past. The event, featuring Alberto Brodesco and Martina Melilli and introduced by Francesco Frizzera, is held in collaboration with MITAG – Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra. On 8 September at 18, back at Mart, Wicked Stories features Camila Sosa Villada, Argentine writer and actress. Once a sex worker, street vendor, and cleaner, she later studied Communication and Theatre and became a performer now recognised as one of the most powerful new voices in Argentine literature thanks to her novel Las Malas (The Evil Ones), a piece of autofiction that guides readers through the trans community of Córdoba. This event is held in collaboration with Festivaletteratura of Mantova. On 9 September at 18, again at Mart, Stories of War brings together the vision of Lorenzo Tugnoli the first Italian winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Photography and curator Francesca Recchia, as they explore how war is narrated through images. On 10 September at 18, Palestinian Stories focuses on Gaza and Palestine through the lens of journalist Paola Caridi, in conversation with Giuseppe Ferrandi, director of the Fondazione Museo storico del Trentino. Closing the Linguaggi cycle on 12 September is the screening of Polvo serán, a film by Carlos Marqués-Marcet with choreography by Marcos Morau. Blending comedy, drama, and musical, the film grapples with the emotions of life and the mystery of death. Following the screening, a conversation with Marco Cappato offers space to reflect on end-of-life choices, bodies, and individual freedom. At each event, Libreria PiccoloBlu will be present with books by the featured speakers, along with a curated reading list related to the Festival’s themes.
Building a more sustainable world environmentally and socially is no longer optional. It is a shared and urgent responsibility. For years, Oriente Occidente has embraced this responsibility as a core part of its mission, promoting projects and practices rooted in accessibility and sustainability two fundamental pillars of its cultural vision. Organising a festival like Oriente Occidente Dance Festival inevitably has an impact: international travel, use of materials, energy, and natural resources. That’s why the organisation has implemented a concrete system of impact-reducing and compensatory actions over time: reduced printed materials, complete elimination of single-use plastic water bottles from theatres and venues, vegetarian catering, and an invitation to use public transport or bicycles. Even the Festival's merchandise reflects this commitment: in collaboration with REDO, bags, backpacks and accessories are created from repurposed communication banners from past editions. The entire event is powered exclusively by energy from renewable, certified sources, through 100% Energia Pulita Dolomiti Energia, Oriente Occidente’s exclusive sustainability partner. This commitment has been officially recognised since 2019 with the Eco Eventi certification by the Province of Trento, awarded to the Festival for its ecological consistency.
For Oriente Occidente, sustainability also means social inclusion, a concrete focus on diversity and active participation. This approach is shared by main sponsor Cassa Rurale Alto Garda e Rovereto, which has long supported accessibility initiatives. Thanks to the work of a dedicated accessibility team, Oriente Occidente selects performances suited to diverse audiences, develops accessible materials, builds meaningful relationships, and ensures the Festival is a truly enjoyable experience for as many people and communities as possible. For neurodivergent individuals or those with cognitive disabilities, introductory kits and preparatory meetings will be available, helping to create a supportive and meaningful encounter with performance. Among the events, a performance by neurodivergent artist Neve Harrington is scheduled designed to be experienced in various ways, including as a relaxed performance. From a mobility perspective, the Oriente Occidente website offers detailed descriptions of all Festival venues. All theatres and venues provide designated seating for people with reduced mobility, barrier-free access to foyers and auditoriums, and dedicated restrooms and parking spaces in close proximity. The long-standing collaboration with ENS Trento continues, making the Festival increasingly accessible to d/Deaf audiences: Subpac devices (wearable backpacks that transmit music through vibrations on the back), programming available in sign language, and a special day dedicated to welcoming visitors from further afield, ensuring they can enjoy the Festival to its fullest. For blind and visually impaired audiences, online audio introductions and venue descriptions will be available also helpful for individuals with cognitive disabilities who prefer audio content over written text. Oriente Occidente’s website is also designed with care: in partnership with Cantiere Creativo, an agency specialising in highly accessible websites, the platform follows the guidelines of The A11Y Project, a global movement promoting digital inclusion through both aesthetic and functional solutions. All of Oriente Occidente’s accessibility efforts align with its active participation in Europe Beyond Access, the largest European project on arts and disability, co-funded by the European Union. Today, a festival can no longer be just a space for performance. Oriente Occidente works to ensure it is also a place that welcomes, respects, includes and imagines a possible future for all.
Starting 12 June, Festival tickets will be available for purchase online.
Online ticketing will be supported by an infoline for information and assistance:
📞 +39 0464 016576
📧 biglietteria@orienteoccidente.it
(available Monday to Friday, 10–14)
Once again this year, Oriente Occidente offers thematic subscription packages, curated around the narrative paths that shape the Festival’s programme.
There are four themed subscriptions that allow audiences to follow a common thread through different spaces and artistic languages: RADICI, ECOSISTEMI, DISSONANZE e PASSATO CONTEMPORANEO.
In addition, the 35 X 35 subscription is available for younger audiences: anyone under 35 can purchase tickets for four performances of their choice (in theatre venues) for just €35. A special Young rate is also reserved for under-35s, offering €10 tickets for all shows.
The Festival’s box office will be located on the ground floor of the Dance House of Oriente Occidente (Corso Rosmini 58) and will be open:
🗓 30 August–2 September: 9–13
🗓 3–13 September: 13–20
Please note: tickets will not be available for purchase at the performance venues. However, tickets may be purchased online up to five minutes before the start of each performance.
