Dance First Think Later

Featured artists
Alina Arshi, Marco Berrettini & Alice Gervais-Ragu, Boris Charmatz & César Vayssié, Padmini Chettur, Ruth Childs & Cécile Bouffard, DD Dorvillier, Carole Douillard & Babette Mangolte, Gerard & Kelly, Pascal Greco, Marie-Caroline Hominal, Joan Jonas, Tamar Kisch, La Tierce, Cynthia Lefebvre, Jérôme Leuba, Ola Maciejewska, Emily Mast, Eszter Salamon, Juliette Uzor, Tyra Wigg

Curator: Olivier Kaeser
Organisation and production: Arta Sperto

3rd edition of Dance First Think Later
Now established as a biennial event after its editions in 2020 and 2022, the 3rd edition of Dance First Think Later continues to explore the field of dance in a broad sense, from various perspectives including dance, performance, video, sculpture, and drawing. The works selected offer aesthetic and sensory experiences, while addressing anatomical, ritual, political, identity, scientific, memorial, territorial, climatic, and therapeutic issues. The body, its gestures and movements, are at the centre of human and societal, individual and collective concerns.

The visual arts and the performing arts have a lot in common artistically, but they operate very differently in terms of production, scheduling, budget, and distribution. A sculpture is tangible, durable (usually), and requires dedicated transport and storage. Dance is immaterial and ephemeral, and in principle cannot be collected. “The dance museum is the dancer’s body” (Boris Charmatz). With Dance First Think Later, Arta Sperto offers a hybrid event, part exhibition, part festival, which juggles the respective characteristics of the works, their duration, and their spatial and technical requirements. With this in mind, part of the exhibition will change from day to day.

The programme will bring together some twenty artists, duos or collectives, from ten different countries and several generations (from 26 to 88 years old) from the fields of dance, performance, contemporary art, and the moving image. All have practised movement in different kinds of contexts, including exhibition spaces. Arta Sperto seeks this proximity between performers and audiences to encourage a privileged relationship with the works. The event will feature a large-scale installation, six video works, 13 performances representing 25 live events, a workshop-colloquium with eight lecturers, and a film evening. Several videos will explore the relationship between body and architecture. A selection of scores from the performances will be presented in a modular set-up. These visual elements (drawings, diagrams, photos, texts, notes, etc.), which are rarely shown in theatres and festivals, will enable visitors to delve into the artists’ creative processes, providing additional elements to better understand their work.

Publication
Dance First Think Later—The Thinking Body between Dance and Visual Arts, vol. 1, which document and develop the 2020 exhibition/festival, will be published. It will feature a rich iconography and 25 commissioned texts (French/English). The book is published by Arta Sperto and distributed by Les presses du réel. Introduction by Olivier Kaeser / Texts by Yvane Chapuis and Florian Gaité / Texts on the artists: Halil Altındere by Hou Hanru / Alexandra Bachzetsis & Julia Born by Hendrick Folkerts / Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz by Kathy Noble / Alex Cecchetti by Lucia Pietroiusti / Clément Cogitore by Marianne Derrien / Dara Friedman by Stephanie Seidel / Gerard & Kelly by Elisabeth Lebovici / Marie-Caroline Hominal by Françoise Ninghetto / Lenio Kaklea by Lou Forster / La Ribot by Maria Muracciole / Pierre Leguillon by Christophe Wavelet / Xavier Le Roy by Laurence Rassel / Klara Lidén by Theresa Patzschke/ Melanie Manchot by Claudia Kappenberg / Olivier Mosset & Jacob Kassay by Chloé Thomas / Samuel Pajand by François Gremaud / Christodoulos Panayiotou by Lucia Pietroiusti / Alexandra Pirici by Florian Malzacher / Julien Prévieux by Raphaël Brunel / Marinella Senatore by Francesco Stocchi / Gregory Stauffer by Karine Tissot / Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca by André Lepecki.

Arta Sperto
Based in Geneva, Arta Sperto (= “artistic experience” in Esperanto) is a structure that curates, produces, organises, and publishes artistic projects, mainly multi-and cross-disciplinary.