Oriente Occidente Festival in Rovereto Explores East-West Dance Dialogues

The Oriente Occidente festival in Rovereto featured two major performances exploring the duality of Eastern and Western dance traditions. Tibetan-born choreographer Sang Jijia, active in China, presented PA/Ethos with the Italian company Spellbound Ballet. The work, divided into two parts, transitions between social gesture and martial arts discipline, with lighting by Marco Policastro and projections by Luca Brinchi and Roberta Zanardo of Santasangre. The electronic beat by Dickson Dee creates an electro-minimalist atmosphere. The festival opened with Abou Lagraa and Compagnie La Baraka's world premiere Wonderful One. Lagraa, of Algerian origin, explores the complementarity of masculine and feminine, with a male duet set to Claudio Monteverdi's Tancredi and Clorinda and a female trio featuring voices of Arab singers Uum Kalthum and Soeur Marie Keyrouz. The female dancers emerge from a cage-like structure reminiscent of Mona Hatoum, creating a space of interpretive freedom.