Romaeuropa Festival 2024 Opens at Teatro Costanzi with Ballet de l'Opéra de Lyon

For the first time, the Teatro Costanzi hosted the opening of the 2024 Romaeuropa Festival, thanks to a collaboration with the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma and support from Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels. The evening featured the Ballet de l'Opéra de Lyon, directed by Cédric Andrieux, performing a double bill: Merce Cunningham's historic 1999 piece BIPED, set to Gavin Bryars' composition performed live by his ensemble, and the new work Mycelium by Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos, with a soundscape by Italo-Greek musician Coti K. BIPED, a landmark of modern dance, showcases Cunningham's precision, complexity, and engagement with technology, including holographic projections by Kaiser and Eshkar. The performance by the Lyon company, whose dancers have different bodies than those of the 1990s, highlights both the enduring relevance and subtle reinvention of Cunningham's language. Mycelium, inspired by fungal mycelium, features nineteen dancers in black moving as a unified organism with small, varied movements, evoking both natural systems and tragic choruses. The festival continues with additional dance performances in collaboration with Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels, including works by Rachid Ouramdane, Noé Soulier, Robyn Orlin, Alice Ripoll, Sacha Waltz, Jan Martens, Leïla Ka, and Taoufiq Izeddiou.