Kenzo Tange's Bologna Towers Become Stage for Site-Specific Performance

The 83-meter-tall white towers designed by Kenzo Tange in Bologna's Fiera District will serve as a monumental backdrop for a site-specific performance by Bologna Festival on July 18 and 19 at 9:30 PM. The event, titled 'Pleiadi. La Piazza si Accende,' combines live music, dance, and videomapping. Choreography by Paxton Ricketts of Nederlands Dans Theater responds to works by Steve Reich, Minoru Miki, Casey Cangelosi, Johann Sebastian Bach, Rubino-Mucchi, and Iannis Xenakis. Visual designer Luca Agnani creates a videomapping for the finale using Xenakis's 'Pleiades' as a sonic cosmos. The towers, commissioned in 1967 for a masterplan by Tange and built in the early 1980s, feature reinterpreted Bologna elements like towers and porticos, with a central pedestrian piazza by Isamu Noguchi. The project, conceived by Maddalena da Lisca, aims to revitalize the institutional square.