Rio’s 2013 Panorama Dance Festival

By Lisa Flueckiger, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Panorama dance festival makes its way to Rio’s stages from Friday, October 25th, for the 22nd edition of one of the most important contemporary dance events in Latin America. On display across the ten-venue, two-week event will be 23 body-inspired performances from around the world also incorporating music, cinema and visual arts.

Since it first began in 1992, over 300 artists have performed at Panorama, and this year’s main themes are twofold; focusing on art in urban space and the relation of the body and the citizen to the city, as well as on the art of the avant-garde that marked the 20th century. According to festival director Nayse López, “the idea is to propose performances in urban landscapes, and reflect on the construction of memory.”

This year’s highlights include the opening weekend performance of the Rosas dance company, one of the world’s most prestigious contemporary dance ensembles. They will present their new piece “Cesena”, bringing together nineteen dancers and musicians in a mixture of the two arts in a celebration of daybreak, a counterpoint to the group’s 2010 Panorama performance “En Attendant” where day falls into darkness. Rosas perform at the Cidade das Artes in Barra da Tijuca on Saturday October, 26th (9PM) and Sunday 27th (3PM).

Celebrating the hundred-year anniversary of Vaslav Nijinsky and Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”, Panorama also shows several performances inspired by these 20th Century dance icons. Xavier Le Roy uses Stravinsky’s music and re-choreographed the piece for a solo dance, and Roger Bernat recreates Pina Bausch’s version of the piece with the public as interpreters of the show.

On the festival’s second weekend, spectators at Parque Lage near Jadim Botânico will have the chance to watch the return of the international dance project coLABoratório. This year, six Ibero-American contemporary dance artists perform on November 2nd and 3rd (1PM – 6PM) at the park’s handsome Visual Arts School.

Highlights of the final weekend center around the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil and Casa França-Brasil cultural centers in Centro, with performances, music and film screenings. Marcela Levi and Lucía Russo’s “Sandwalk With Me” is an interactive urban intervention about the time between hurrying from one point to the other.

The festival also offers an educational program, encouraging people to think about the role of dance and contemporary art and the ways in which it can be broken down and researched. Workshops and seminars will be held at Oi Futuro Flamengo and MAR museum, while the Panoraminho section is aimed at children, with two special performances taking place this year.

The non-profit Festival was created by choreographer Lia Rodrigues in 1992 out of a wish to create a better platform for contemporary dance and its dissemination in Rio de Janeiro. First conceived as a dance festival, it gradually incorporated the art of the body in general, over time becoming a multidisciplinary festival.

What: Panorama Festival
Where: Cidade das Artes, Barra da Tijuca as well as theaters and cultural centers across the city
When: October 25th – November 10th
Entrance: R$20 (some events free). Tickets available from Tickets For Fun (ticketsforfun.com.br)