“Our key word is: novelty, novelty, novelty. We do not want to be a museum for choreographers in the midst of change”: in short, this statement, released a few years ago by the director of the Rotterdamse Dansgroep, Käthy Gosschalk, in the publication dedicated to the panorama of choreography in the Netherlands by the Nederlands Istituut voor de Dans, perfectly sums up the policy of the company that inaugurates the Festival. Founded in 1975 under the name of Werkcentrum Dans, renamed Rotterdamse Dansgroep in the 1988/1989 season, Gosschalk’s company has played a leading role in the diffusion of modern and contemporary dance techniques in Holland. Since its inception, the group has alternated the hospitality of foreign choreographers already established on the international scene with the promotion of talented young Dutch authors, many of whom have grown up within the Rotterdamse Dansgroep itself. In these twenty years the group’s repertoire has been enriched with titles signed by great masters and leading names of American dance such as Merce Cunningham, Bill T. Jones, Martha Clarke, Stephen Petronio, Tere O’Connor, alongside works by the Dutch Hans Tuerlings, Ton Simons, Ed Wubbe, and the newer Rick Kam and Anouk van Dijk, both of whom grew up at the Rotterdamse Dansgroep. Composed of a stable core of seven-eight dancers, the company makes use of performers with a flexible technique such as the talented Gaby Allard, protagonist of one of the three pieces on the program in Rovereto. A glance at the contemporary repertoire of the 90s is enough to realize how this group deftly moves from the witty-gymnastic tone of “The death of generous Henry” by Tere O’Connor (’94) to the intricate couple variations of “Two many cocks prolong the night” by Rock Kam (’94) to the academic-contemporary virtuosity of “Composition for Dancers and Color” by Ton Simons (’95). The latter choreographer, after training at the Rotterdam Dance Academy with Lucas Hoving and in New York with Cunningham, was part of the first group of dancers of the Werkcentrum Dans. Since 1986 he has directed Ton Simons and Dancers in New York, continuing to maintain a close working relationship with the Rotterdamse Dansgroep. Among the most successful works created for the Dutch group are “The Idea of Order” and the aforementioned “Composition for Dancers and Color”, created with the musician Horst Rickels. From this successful production, articulated in solos, duets and group choreographies that revisit the Cunninghamian technique with a bright virtuosity, Simons has extracted a piece created for Gaby Allard, entitled “Violin Voice”. The choreography was mounted on Mozart’s Concerto 1 in B major, but was then danced to the music composed by Rickels. In the Rovereto program, Gaby Allard will dance to the original music by Mozart. The opening piece, “Part II” (1996), is instead composed by Rick Kam. Inspired by Greek mythology, Baudelaire’s poem “L’irrémediable” and some texts by Camille Paglia, it is a mystical piece for ten dancers to music by Cas de Marcz. “Fortune is a devil who smiles at you” is instead one of the proverbs that inspired “Lucky”, a quartet created this April by Anouk van Dijk.
