Visavì Gorizia Dance Festival – two cities, two nations, one heart
The Visavì Gorizia Dance Festival is a cross-border contemporary dance festival where spectators can walk from Gorizia in Italy to Nova Gorica in Slovenia, crossing a square that was, until recently, divided by barbed wire and a wall.
Gorizia and Nova Gorica were once joined, but the two cities were created in 1947 when the Treaty of Paris established Europe’s new borders after World War II. Gorizia, with a medieval town at its heart, was to belong to Italy, and the newer, less developed part of the city was to be part of the Slovenian Republic in Yugoslavia. The new town was named Nova Gorica, or New Gorizia, and a wall was built to keep them apart.
In 2004, Slovenia joined the European Union and the armed border was removed, and this year Gorizia and Nova Gorica are reunited as the European Capital of Culture, in a project called GO! 2025.
Walter Mramor, artistic director of the Visavì Festival, is passionate about culture in this northeastern corner of Italy, and his large-scale theatre production company, ArtistiAssociati, manages two theatres in neighbouring towns. In 2020, he founded the unique cross-border festival, which managed to go ahead between Covid lockdowns. The historic border that once separated these twin cities – known as ‘Italy’s Berlin Wall’ –becomes both a cultural stage and a model of what the world of the future could look like.
The name ‘VISAVÌ’ Gorizia Dance Festival seeks to highlight the peculiar location of the festival and to communicate its push for openness. The term ‘visavì’, from the French expression ‘vis-à-vis’, is widely used in Gorizia with the meaning ‘in front of’. It implies a feeling of closeness, dialogue, and exchange that the festival aims to increase thanks to the universal language of dance.
Artists and companies from Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Czechia, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Japan, Luxembourg, Serbia, the United Kingdom, Burkina Faso, Madagascar and South Africa will be performing. There are several world and national premieres in the lineup, including the world premiere of Sulla Leggerezza, created by Virgilio Sieni, who will be there with his company, and the national premiere of Akram Khan‘s latest work, Turning of Bones, with dancers from Gauthier Dance, Stuttgart.
The venues and timetable of the Visavì Gorizia Dance Festival have been planned to allow those who wish to do so to attend all the elbow-to-elbow/vis-à-vis events.
As part of GO! 2025 and Nova Gorica-Gorizia’s strategy to promote the construction of a borderless city, the One Dance European City (ODEC) Festival is being held at the same time. This is an international project, conceived and coordinated by ArtistiAssociati and SNG Nova Gorica, which draws on the collaboration and experience of Aterballetto-Fondazione della Danza: nine short creations, performed in just a few square metres and choreographed by some of today’s most significant dancemakers, will wind their way between the two cities along a route designed to explore the cross-border conurbation of Nova Gorica and Gorizia and offer residents and visitors a unique experience of the area.
Visavì Gorizia Dance Festival– 6th Edition
9-19 October 2025
Gorizia – Nova Gorica
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
