The image of this edition shows mushrooms sprouting from a city ground, an “urban underwood”. Mushrooms are part of that environment which enables the decomposition process and the recirculation of nutrients to sustain the health and luxuriance of the upper level: the crowns of trees. A wood is one big organism connected in all its parts, in a mysterious and infinitely small dimension inhabited by spores, mycelia, hyphae, but also bacteria and viruses. Danae has always – and all the more now – chosen to support the underwood, to stand by those who silently and mysteriously create bonds and connections.
We more and more believe that the new path we must necessarily take will be found by supporting forces and thoughts away from the limelight, the known territories. We are aware of the transformation we will go through along this path, but we don’t know where it will lead us.
Many are the questions that we, as artists and festival organizers, have asked ourselves in such new and exceptional circumstances: how can the arts contribute to work through the individual and collective trauma? And, particularly, how can our Festival try to say something that pertains not only to our small circle but can relate to the world? Because it’s time to act and think on a wider and higher level.
Of course, we lay no claims to answering the questions raised by the times we live in, but we strive to do what we are able to do by deploying the energy of bodies and minds, the very tools that nothing but death can take away from us.
These are our feelings as we present to the city of Milan an edition full of projects, workshops, meetings: let’s dance, let’s create worlds and poetry, let’s experiment as daringly as ever. Be with us.
