DANZA&DANZA names the winners of its 2020 Awards

Italy's DANZA&DANZA magazine has announced its prize winners for 2020 with artists and productions from Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Teatro dell'Opera in Rome, Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, Opéra de Paris and Finnish National Ballet.

Every year, since 1987, the January/February issue of Danza&Danza magazine presents the winners of the Danza&Danza Awards, awarded by the magazine's critics and journalists to outstanding artists, shows, and projects from the past year.

Maria Luisa Buzzi, director of Danza&Danza and president of the jury, said,

The prizes awarded in this edition have an additional value in view of the enormous difficulties experienced in 2020 by the entire performing arts sector, which unfortunately still has no imminent solutions on the horizon. Nevertheless, in the year ravaged by the pandemic, creativity did not fail, showing its strength through inventiveness and professionalism. The pride of redemption has often triumphed.

The jurors were Elisabetta Ceron, Giuseppe Distefano, Francesca Pedroni, Silvia Poletti, Sergio Trombetta and Carmelo A. Zapparrata.

The SPECIAL PRIZE went to the 2020 edition of the Bolzano Danza/Tanz Bozen Festival, curated by Emanuele Masi. The project, called Eden, had one spectator at a time (for 450 free performances) sitting in the stalls of Bolzano's large Teatro Comunale. The audience of one would watch a solo created for an unusual and symbolic tête-à-tête by Carolyn Carlson, Michele Di Stefano and Rachid Ouramdane.

The CONTEMPORARY DANCE WORK PRIZE sent to a work entitled Sonoma by Marcos Morau and his company La Veronal, presented as a national premiere at the Festival Oriente Occidente in Rovereto.

The CLASSICAL DANCE WORK PRIZE went to the new version of Le Corsaire created by José Carlos Martínez for the Corps de Ballet of the Rome Opera, directed by Eleonora Abbagnato, which after the first performances was suspended due to lockdown.

A tie for ITALIAN PRODUCTION of the year went to Don Juan by Johan Inger for FND/Aterballetto, which premiered at the Comunale di Ferrara in October, and Toccare. The White Dance by Cristina Kristal Rizzo, co-produced by Torinodanza and MilanOltre in collaboration with MiTo Settembre Musica.

INTERPRETERS OF THE YEAR: for classical ballet, the Russian dancer, now Principal dancer at the Finnish National Ballet, Maria Kochetkova, who stood out in Aleksej Fadeečev's Don Quixote with the Ballet of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples; and étoile of the POB, Hugo Marchand, who in Solos and Duets – seen at the Ravenna Festival and the Nervi Festival – for Jerome Robbins' A Suite of Dances. For contemporary dance, awards went to the American dancer Annie Hanauer, interpreter of the solo by Rachid Ouramdane at Bolzano Danza, and to the Mozambican Edivaldo Ernesto, seen at Romaeuropa Festival in a piece by Sasha Waltz.

In the EMERGING TALENTS section, Maria Celeste Losa, soloist at the La Scala company, Claudia D'Antonio from Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, and Jari Boldrini and Giulio Petrucci, who have been noted in various contemporary projects, were all awarded.

COREOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR was awarded to the 33-year-old French philosopher and dancemaker Noé Soulier, for his work at the Dance Biennale in Venice; EMERGING COREOGRAPHER went to Luna Cenere, who created the site-specific Genealogia_time specific at the Campana dei Caduti in Rovereto, commissioned by the Oriente Occidente Festival.

As always, Italian talents working abroad were recognised with the ITALIAN DANCER ABROAD going to Letizia Galloni, Sujet at POB, and to the young Marco Masciari, currently with The Royal Ballet in London.

The CAREER PRIZE was awarded to the étoile of the Teatro alla Scala and renowned teacher Liliana Cosi.

A new award this year was for a CREATION FOR STREAMING and given to the Flemish videomaker and choreographer Wim Vandekeybus for the dancers of the English company, Rambert: Draw from Within. 

Top photo: Claudia D'Antonio in Don Quixote, photo by Francesco Squeglia

Gramilano( Editor )

Graham Spicer is a writer, director and photographer in Milan, blogging (under the name ‘Gramilano') about dance, opera, music and photography for people “who are a bit like me and like some of the things I like”. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy.

His scribblings have appeared in various publications from Woman's Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the ‘Danza in Italia' column for Dancing Times magazine.