NOTES FOR A SHARED VISION/DIRECTION

During its many years of activity, BTT – Balletto Teatro di Torino has successfully toured the world, bringing its passion with it, and boldly bringing together in its creative process seemingly distant entities, messengers of a mixture from which the company’s topicality draws takes vigour.

A chain of relationships, breaths, and dedications: BTT’s project activity is dense, compact, tending in unexpected directions. It welcomes the future, between human and social experiences, tirelessly practising the time of reciprocity and curiosity.

A constant training of the gaze towards the world, attentive to details and to the frame, which is wary of impositions and feeds on awakenings.

Many biographies for one collective story with the awareness of working alongside people who share fervour, vitality, and always renewed momentum.

An interweaving of natives and outsiders capable of stirring our waters, creating a community that flows, shapes, and constantly changes shape without ever losing sight of the context in which it operates.

We dance towards others, creating a rhythm where intimacy and distance alternate to generate vast landscapes, not a space of passage, but a common home where it’s possible to experiment and nurture thought, the way we perceive others and ourselves, and where the research with the artists who encounter our projects is not a search for consensus, but at a constant tension towards the risk connected to the unknown.

An inclination towards well-being and care.

The company’s indispensable production aspect is completed by embracing the distribution aspect of circulation, thus multiplying possibilities and places to build communities and to experiment.

BTT is a space for us, a space for those who surround us: a pulsating heart, creating new geographies, new bonds.

Expanding, towards new perspectives.

Attentively listening – always – in the world.

Viola Scaglione, Artistic Director

ARTISTIC PROJECT

TENSIONS AND INTENTIONS FOR 2024

BTT’s artistic project is based on the conviction that the processes of creation and transmission of choreographic culture are fundamental for the expansion and dissemination of knowledge, along with the values and knowledge associated with them.
The company has an ever-growing need to return to experiencing dance not only as a form of artistic expression, but as a ritual capable of connecting people across cultural, social, and physical boundaries, creating an experiential space of sharing.
The core idea is that the richness and depth of art derive from the diversity in perspectives and the artists’ ability to integrate their values and emotional experiences into the creative process. This contributes to the creation of works that are perceived as authentic and that can have a significant impact on the audience.

The interpreters’ biographical aspect becomes more and more important for BTT’s poetics. The one-on-one way of working facilitates direct communication, allowing the choreographer to convey their vision clearly and the dancer to express personal ideas and sensations. This kind of relationship also favours the interpreter’s artistic growth and evolution, encouraging them to explore new ways of expressing themselves through movement and to develop an even more aware and autonomous approach. This results in deep communication, which is fundamental to achieving a cohesive, authentic, and engaging performance.

INDAGINE SUL DESIDERIO (INVESTIGATION INTO DESIRE)

Indagine sul desiderio (Investigation into Desire) is the thematic thread of the new path undertaken in 2022 by BTT, a path which starts and unravels in the vast space of desire. From the Latin desiderium – “de” and “sidus”, literally “without stars” -, an introspective journey, a push involving interpreter and author to imagine themselves beyond, within a single universe where they can allow themselves a human time of exploration and rediscovery, outside a conventional logic of production based on the pressure of performance.

An invitation to make projects from desires, which cannot be considered mere “dreams”. Being responsible for one’s own desire, one’s own talent, means answering to its call and following its direction. It is an imperative that pushes both interpreter and author out of themselves and enables the only kind of lasting transformation to take place, meaning «changing in the ability to change» while taking care of the awakening of such passionate research.

Dance becomes an instrument through which choreographers and dancers can express their identity, explore their stories, and convey emotions and their dedications to the audience. The interpreter’s role is no longer just to execute choreography, they become an integral part of the creative process, directly influencing the meaning and impact of the final work.

When one explores a desire, there is an invisible expansion of who one is. An expansion that allows one to spot new horizons and, within these, know more about oneself and others.

Which desire lives inside us?
How does desire survive in a space that is shared between the author and the interpreter?
What does it mean to be an interpreter today? And an author?
What “ethical” pact exists between these two roles?

The investigation starts from a process which began taking shape in 2022 with the work “SISTA”, the all-female duet by Simona Bertozzi which sees interpreters Marta Ciappina and Viola Scaglione as protagonists of a precise choice: the common desire to come together, close the eyes and trust by opening passages between presence and proximity. Two different ways of being vigilant, tied by an invisible weaving. Within the framework of this choreographic thread, in 2023 choreographer Manfredi Perego developed a solo, “Studio per ALISEO” for company dancer Nadja Guesewell. In 2024, the individual activity is focussed on dancer Luca Tomasoni together with choreographer Mauro de Candia, who will create a solo for him, “UMINGMAK”.

HISTORY

Founded by Loredana Furno in 1979, BTT-Balletto Teatro di Torino has recently celebrated 40 years of ongoing activity. Forty years of dance, research, experimentation, relationships, collaborations. It is a company – currently consisting of seven dancers, coming from important experiences at the international level – which, with growing success, continues on its original path of creation of dance shows which earn recognition from aware critics. Aside from its activity abroad, BTT is very present in Italy, and particularly in Turin, where it is acknowledged as a stable production body, institutionalized both at the regional and at the City level.

After the first historic 20 years and the ten-year collaboration with Matteo Levaggi – resident choreographer who was able to give the Company a strong and distinctive identity – since 2014 BTT has broadened its artistic path and has opened itself to important national and international authors. Thus, the resident dancers – coming from an eclectic formative background – dance with ease creations by choreographers who are very different in terms of style and identity, such as Itzik Galili, Antonello Tudisco, Marco de Alteriis, Yin Yue, Andrea Costanzo Martini, Ella Rothschild, Manfredi Perego, Silvia Gribaudi, Simona Bertozzi, Mauro de Candia, Alessio Maria Romano, Laura Domingo Aguero, Jye-Hwei Lin, José Reches, Renata Sheppard, Matteo Marziano Graziano, Nicoletta Cabassi. 

The dancers’ daily research work with the various guest choreographers and the Company’s stability make BTT one of the most prominent realities in today’s Italy. In 2009, after winning a public tender, BTT was given the artistic direction of the theatre Lavanderia a Vapore – ‘Center of Excellence for Dance’ in Collegno. Renovated by the City of Collegno after being abandoned for years, this charming facility was entrusted to BTT, which took over the artistic direction for the first 6 years of activity and is now resident there within the bounds of Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo’s initiatives. 

Since 2016 Viola Scaglione has been alongside Loredana Furno in the role of artistic director. Viola adopts an open and inclusive approach, in horizontal dialogue with the company’s dancers and the artists involved in the various productions, thus stimulating group processes deeply rooted in the fusion of personal growth and artistic evolution paths.

For a long time, BTT has paid special attention to choreographic research work and original musical scores, including a considerable number of unreleased tracks and live performances. An example regarding the musical aspect is the collaboration with the prestigious Macerata Opera Festival-Arena Sferisterio – after having won, in 2018, the tender ‘Bando Macerata 4.0’ with the production We Can be Waves (concept, direction, choreography by Matteo Marziano Graziano) – and the successful collaboration with Rivolimusica, thereby designing artistic paths characterized by contamination and sharing.

Another integral part of the Company’s activity is the sector dedicated to youths, which offers shows addressed to students in compulsory education during school hours and includes the organizing of National Festivals such as Danza Alla Fortezza del Priamar (Savona) and Acqui in Palcoscenico, which has reached its 36th edition in 2020.

In 2020 SCENE – Network for the Performing Arts was born. SCENE is the new artistic season promoted by BTT, the Cities of Rivoli and Avigliana, Rivolimusica-Istituto Musicale G. Balmas and Revejo/Teatro Fassino di Avigliana, all in a partnership for the ideation of interdisciplinary projects.

An active collaboration combining intuitions, passions, art that creates one body in which different perspectives merge and transform in a mutually enriching manner. It is a project for the future, a point of reference for the audience in the matrix of an offer devoted to variety and experimentation, without limitations of genre or artistic languages.