From February 21 to June 15, 2021 the new participatory project comes alive in Milan

Winner of the call Bando alle Periferie which focuses on immigrant women, the body and cultural dialogue. Meetings, workshops, walking experiences, performances, for a new cartography of a many-voiced Milan.

Le Alleanze dei Corpi, winner of the call Bando alle Periferie of Comune di Milano, is a path of laboratory and participatory nature that explores the representation of the physical, psychological, territorial and linguistic boundaries. The project involves as protagonists the immigrant citizens who live in Municipio II – Loreto area, via Padova, aiming to create an active and intercultural citizenship.

Choreographers, anthropologists and visual artists who have experienced migration firsthand, will explore body language as a privileged field of perception and investigation through an experimental teaching methodology. The outcomes of this process will be presented to the public in the form of performances, public meetings, walking experiences and video documentation. Following underground paths, sometimes invisible, through experiences and stories, an unpublished map of Milan will be drawn to reveal the links that make the area of Via Padova a permeable and open reality, a symbol of hospitality.

The title of the project is inspired by Judith Butler’s famous text The Alliance of Bodies, where the American philosopher underlines the innate political and performative dimension of the temporary gathering of bodies. The coexistence, the sharing of time and space define a temporary community, a chorality of presences that comes together and acquires a new strength, reputation, status, which goes beyond that of the individual person and brings out a new plural and collective identity.

February 21, 2019 at HUG – Milan, via Corrado Venini n. 83 at 6.30 pm
MEETING: Le Alleanze dei Corpi: Pratiche di danza, antropologia e decolonizzazione dei corpi nell’era delle migrazioni contemporanee on the occasion of World Anthropology Day.
On February 21 at 6.30 pm, after months of elaboration and dialogue with associations, artists, scholars, the process activates its public phase with the meeting Le Alleanze dei Corpi: Pratiche di danza, antropologia e decolonizzazione dei corpi nell’era delle migrazioni contemporanee as part of the World Anthropology Day, an international day dedicated to public anthropology in Milan, promoted by the Milano Bicocca University, Department of Anthropological Sciences. The meeting, which will take place at HUG – Milan via Venini, highlights through an anthropological and choreographic perspective the experimental practices activated recently in Milan and specifically in the communities of the Piazzale Loreto and via Padova area.

Introduced by Maria Paola Zedda (curator). Speakers: Bianca Ricardi (anthropologist), Ariella Vidach (choreographer), Sara Elisa Bramani (anthropologist, Lab of Visual Anthropology, Milano Bicocca University), Amina Natasha El Zeer (vice president of the Aisha cultural association), Cristiana Borella (Amici del Parco Trotter).

Following a selection of video screenings: The Migrant School of Bodies by Studio Azzurro and Culturalmente, Itinerari artistici verso l’interculturalità by Giuseppe Baresi.

March 8, 2019 Day of encounter, dialogue and celebration on the alliance of women in contexts of marginalization

From April 1 to 7, 2021 workshop with Nezaket Ekici

The first workshop path features Nezaket Ekici, a German Turkish artist who immigrated to Germany in the 90s, studied and worked with the artist and performer Marina Abramovic. With a group of foreign and Milanese citizens, Nezaket explores with a process of great depth and expressive force the female body and the representations of the cultural border, through practices on long duration performance.

April 17 and 18, 2019 Walk About of the Urban Experience lab conducted by Carlo Infante

The project continues with walkabouts, in a series of participatory explorations which, through web radio streaming, will create a map of the routes in the via Padova neighborhood. The radio-nomadic conversations will involve the various stakeholders, associations, citizens and performers, aiming to create a core of work on the new participatory map-making of the neighborhood, for the construction of an active and intercultural citizenship.

From May 13 to 19, 2021 Workshop with Cecilia Bengolea

The second workshop is led by Cecilia Bengolea, an Argentine-born choreographer whose research explores the anthropology of dance with a contemporary attitude. A leading figure in the international choreographic scenario, winner of the Paris Critics’ Prize and the Young Artist Prize Award at the Gwangju Biennale in 2014. Cecilia collaborates with visual artists such as Jeremy Deller, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and choreographers such as Florentina Holzinger, Francois Chaignaud Marlene Montero Freitas. She creates
performances and paroxysmal trails, modern and primitive at the same time, showing a deep interest in the transmission and deterritorialization of artistic codes in a political reflection of the body, focused on the hybridization of traditional languages.

From May to June 2021 Ariella Vidach lab

Ariella Vidach, from April to June with the collaboration of the artist and choreographer Elisabetta Consonni, will combine the work of the invited artists with the realities of the neighborhood who have been working for years through art, singing, sewing in that neighborhood, sharing practices, choreography, musical, corporeal. All phases will be open to the public: processual practices, performances and meetings, up to the final outcome of the path that will be presented in the city.

June 13, 2019 7.00 pm Preview of the final performance at MUDEC – Museum of cultures of Milan

LE ALLEANZE DEI CORPI Freedom in the public sphere – a preview of the performative action and presentation of the results of the project

June 14, 2019 at 6.00 pm – Parco Trotter

Final performance by the choreographer Ariella Vidach and Claudio Prati

A polyphony of sounds, words, gestures whispered through the body, will compose a collage of images and fragments that will become the heritage of the city thanks to the creation of precious records for a still unwritten history of contemporary Milan.

With the contribution of MIBAC – Spettacolo dal Vivo, Comune di Milano, Bando alle Periferie.

With the patronage of Comune di Milano

With the collaboration and participation of Bicocca University of Milan, Department of Social and Political Sciences and Department of Visual Anthropology, Aisha Project, Eva Group, Casa delle Assocazioni, Spazio Socialità – Amici del Parco Trotter, Hug Milano, Associazione Talento, Casa delle Associazioni e del Volontariato – Municipio 2, Arti girovaghe.

Mediapartner Danza & Danza, Radio Nolo

With the contribution of MIBAC – Spettacolo dal Vivo, Comune di Milano, Bando alle Periferie.

With the patronage of Comune di Milano

With the collaboration and participation of Bicocca University of Milan, Department of Social and Political Sciences and Department of Visual Anthropology, Aisha Project, Eva Group, Casa delle Assocazioni, Spazio Socialità – Amici del Parco Trotter, Hug Milano, Associazione Talento, Casa delle Associazioni e del Volontariato – Municipio 2, Arti girovaghe.

Mediapartner Danza & Danza, Radio Nolo