Collaborations with Dancers
Project Summary: IDACO nyc is a platform for Italian artists visiting and living in New York, and for New York artist who want to take part to a dialogue with Italian culture, to explore and share their unique paths through movement and choreographic, as well as visual, arts.
IDACO’s mission is to connect Italian choreographers and artists who live in New York City, with the local contemporary art scene. We want to encourage networking and artistic research between the multiple creative resources of NYC performing arts. We aim to offer an artistic platform with the goal to cross cultural boundaries and cultivate a sense of shared identity.
The IDACO nyc is a week of events on May 24 -28, 2016 in Manhattan, NY. The platform will open at the Italian Cultural Institute, 686 Park Avenue, NY. The program will include panel of discussions, video screenings, dance workshops, site-specific events and performances at the SHEEN CENTER, NY.
Vision Statement:
While beauty of truth nestles itself in many of these things, the people find they seek a structure they can not always fit within.
Khensani Mathebula presents a work in collaboration with artist Carrie Swim to reflect on the tension and opportunity of the tradtitions and spirit of mankind seen in corporate and individulisic identity. Carrie speaks of structures and inescaple standards of artistic masters and even theology held in something like standed glass windows that are found in churches and the very fiber of Italian society. Four dancers will move in unison behind the panels to express the beautiful but sometimes confining and conforming experience of these standards and traditions. The story then follows the fifth dancer’s journey of spiritual identity. She stumbles, disorientated by religious constraints and tries to enter the space and community norm behind each panel, doing duets of tension with each dancer. Rejected by their differing rhythm she finds a river of truth/panel on the ground.. She first battles underneath it, later finding that dance can be inspired by the brush strokes on the canvas. The other dancers pull down their panels and begin to have their own unique experiences. We embrace the legacy of religion as a foundation and opportunity for the freedom to engage the body itself as a temple of truth and vehicle of unique expression in the contemporary world.