Some Fabbrica Europa 2017 Festival Highlights

Until June 15: FABBRICA EUROPA 2017. Stazione Leopolda, Viale Fratelli Rosselli 5. Times vary. Tickets range from €5-€25 depending on the event. To see the full schedule and purchase tickets, visit www.fabbricaeuropa.net.

 The EU wide avant-garde performance festival, Fabbrica Europa, is back in Florence this spring and summer for its 24th edition. The festival is teeming with a wide range of performances that give audiences an insiders view to the evolution of experimental dance, performative art, music and cultural appreciation.

Artists, musicians, movers, and dreamers from the Middle East, India, China, and the Mediterranean descend on Stazione Leopolda with pieces that create a window into the realities of contemporary landscapes and human interactions through art and emotion. The event strives to be a vehicle to convey experiences and knowledge to large audiences for deeper understanding of the various communities of the world.

The festival is usually centered on dance and movement performances, with a healthy mix of music, theater productions, workshop performances, and art exhibitions.

me Bel, Gala (dance)

The engaging movement piece, Gala, uses both professional and amateur dancers, actors, and lovers of art in diverse formations to question the concept of dance. The collaboration of all body types and skill levels celebrates human capabilities in dance while using its fierce choreography to go against social and political preconceptions of being a “dancer.” (Stazione Leopolda, May 10 and 11 @ 9 pm. Tickets €15-€20, €10 for students.)

A Love, Naked (music)

Two of the biggest African American contemporary musicians, William Parker and Hamid Drake, come together to explore the musical depth of John Coltrane’s masterpiece A Love Supreme 50 years after its release. The idea at the base of A Love, Naked is the fascinating history of jazz, and using that emotional rawness to arrive at a more intimate and spiritual performance for both musician and spectator. With only a stand up bass and a drum kit, the artists strive to uncover the most genuine version of the musical triumph. (Stazione Leopolda, May 14 @ 9 pm. Tickets €12-€10, €8 for students).

Prélude (dance)

The new creation by choreographer Cristina Kristal Rizzo invites the audience to a performance on the essence of the purity of dance. The movements of the ensemble attempt to bring forth the invisible force of continual energy that vibrates between every dancer on stage – the governing ideal of the universal law of nature. The bodies of the dancers follow their instincts in simple and beautiful formations on stage to the sounds of experimental jazz musician Sun Ra, a pioneer in the Afro Futurist movement. (Stazione Leopolda, 13 May @ 9 pm, May 14 @ 7 pm. Tickets €15-€12, students €10).  (tessa lucia debole)