Fabrizio Favale
Fabrizio Favale has created over thirty choreographies since 1999 and is invited by numerous festivals and theaters of the highest international importance such as Théâtre National de la Danse Chaillot Paris, Biennale de la Danse de Lyon, La Biennale di Venezia, SIDance Seoul, Varna International Festival and many others. He has received prestigious awards for choreography in Spain, Germany, Italy and Serbia.
His dance is oriented towards abstraction, typical of the American techniques with which he trained. The choreographic landscapes that he draws in his works seem to refer from time to time to distant and unknown worlds, in which dance presents itself as a horizon free from interpretations and classifications.
With an orientation towards exploration and experimentation, Fabrizio Favale outlines sometimes telluric, sometimes ethereal atmospheres, with intensity or rarefactions obtained almost exclusively with the pure movement of the dancers.
The existing techniques of ballet, modern and post-modern dance, up to complex and even virtuous evolutions, are widely used and redesigned with experimental and completely personal languages, each time in different arrangements.
Geometries, embroideries of movement, chaotic themes, canons, unisons, variations, optical effects of overlapping movements with psychedelic tones, design choreographic panoramas that seem to have no beginning or end.
With a never anthropocentric perspective that looks with a certain predilection to forms of existence different from ours, he has crossed over the years territories perhaps more belonging to botany, ethology, meteorology, glaciology… sometimes also crossing territories of the fairy tale, of the myth, of the popular tradition.
Fabrizio studies classical ballet with Denis Carey, Victor Litvinov, Sue Carlton Jones, Robert Strainer. Techniques and methods of American Modern and Post-Modern dance (specifically Cunningham, Limón, Nicholais and Trisha Brown) with Andé Peck, Roberta Garrison, Sandra Fuciarelli, Jeff Slayton, Betty Jones, Nina Watt, Irene Hultmann, Louise Burns, Alwin Nicholais.
From a very young age he received numerous scholarships including Full Scholarship at the American Dance Festival, Duke University, USA in 1990 and the scholarship for choreographers Ater of Reggio Emilia in 1991.
At the age of 19 he received the “Nati per la danza” award at the Romolo Valli Theater in Reggio Emilia and at the age of 26 the nomination as “best Italian dancer of the year 1996” from the G. Tani Award.
From 1988 to 1991 he danced for the Ballet of Naples. From 1991 to 2001 he danced for the Virgilio Sieni Danza Company, dancing the most relevant roles in all company performance.
His works have been co-produced by Théâtre National de la Danse Chaillot Paris, MUSEION – National Museum of Arts in Bolzano, Tanz Bozen Festival, Festival MILANoLTRE Milan, Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Vicenza.
In 2011, on the occasion of the presentation of the work “Un ricamo fatto sul nulla” at the Gran Teatro of the National Academy of Dance in Rome, he received the “Medal of the President of the Republic for Italian choreographic talent”.
He invents a series of experimental programming formats for Italian festivals and theatres. The main ones are: “Platform of Balinese Dance” (2014-2015) for Santarcangelo Festival and “Circo Massimo” (2016-2017) for Teatro Duse Bologna.
He collaborates with musicians and composers such as Mountains (USA), Teho Teardo (IT), Daniela Cattivelli (IT) and visual artists such as ZimmerFrei (IT), Lele Marcoianni (IT).
His outdoor project Le Stagioni Invisibili – Endless Choreographic Cycle 2018-2021 received the “PerChiCrea 2019” Production Award from Siae and Mibac and was included in the shortlist of the 8 best European outdoor projects 2021 of the Big Pulse Dance Alliance in the Open Air Commissions program.
With the duo First Rose (Fabrizio Favale and Andrea Del Bianco), he also designs sets, costumes and artifacts, which sometimes graft the choreographic works into enigmatic configurations of strange beings, like hybrids of a sort of world that is both organic and inorganic.
For the three-year period 22-24 Fabrizio Favale is Italian Associate Artist of MILANoLTRE, Elfo-Puccini Theater Milan.
In 2022, in collaboration with the choreographer Simona Bertozzi, with Sementerie Artistiche di Crevalcore and with the support of the Municipality of Bologna, he creates the Atelier della Danza – Experimental center for the arts of dance and choreography and the Plantings on Pluto Festival (Crevalcore , BO).
Works and video
2023 Danze Americane
2022 Winter Forest
2022 The Rose Alien Tour
2021 Alce estratto
2020 The Halley Solo
2020 The Wilderness
2020 Lute
2019 The Rain Sequence
2018 Argon
2018 / 2021 Le Stagioni Invisibili – Ciclo Coreografico Infinito
2018 Circeo
2015 Ossidiana
2014 Orbita
2014 Alberi
2013 Cartografia disabitata
2012 Isolario
2011 Un ricamo fatto sul nulla
2009 Se fossero le Alpi
2008 Il Gioco del gregge di capre
2008 Kauma
2005/2008 Mahabharata – episodi scelti
2005 II H
2003 Roccu
2003 The unclean rest
2003 Opera scorpione
2000 Vent
1999 Ganimede Show
Awards
– Medal of the President of the Republic for the Italian choreographic talent 06-07-2011 Rome, Gran Teatro dell’Accademia Nazionale
– Second prize for best choreography for “Un ricamo fatto sul nulla” 30-10-2010 15Masdanza International Festival, Spain
– Third prize for best choreography for “Un ricamo fatto sul nulla” 05-11-2011 No-Ballet Ludwigshafen, Germany
– First prize for best choreography for “Il gioco del gregge di capre” 23-10-2009 14Masdanza International Festival, Spain
– First prize for best choreography for “Il gioco del gregge di capre” 12-05-2009 National Theater Belgrade, Serbia
– Prize Fondo Fare, promoted by Ater Danza and Rete Anticorpi ER for the work “Isolario” 18/06/2012 Bologna
– Co-production between Ater Danza, the National Foundation for Dance of Reggio Emilia and the Anticorpi Network for the work “Orbita” 2014
– Co-production with Danae Festival Milano and Teatri di Vita Bologna for the work “Alberi” 2014
– Three-year production residency at the Municipal Theater of Casalecchio di Reno (Bologna) by ERT Emilia-Romagna Teatro Foundation, 2005-2008
– The Company is one of the 4 Italian groups selected for The Italian Show Case. Dance Base Fringe Festival of Edinburgh, Scotland, 2013
– 2016 the work “Ossidiana” is invited to the Biennale de la Danse de Lyon
– 2018 the work “CIRCEO” is co-produced by Théâtre National de la Danse Chaillot, Paris
– 2019 the project LE STAGIONI INVISIBILI – CICLO COREOGRAFICO INFINITO / The Creation of Seasons wins the Production Prize “PerChiCrea” by SIAE and MIBAC
– 2019 the work “Argon” wins the Danzaurbana XL 2019 award
– 2020 the works “Lute”, “Ibis Tanz” and “The wilderness” are co-produced by the Festival MILANoLTRE
– 2021 the works “ALCE” and “Icelandic Ufo” are co-produced by The Festival MILANoLTRE
– 2021 the work ALL ANIMALS from the project LE STAGIONI INVISIBILI – CICLO COREOGRAFICO INFINITO was shortlisted by the Big Pulse Dance Alliance as one of the best 8 European projects 2021 in the programme Open Air Commissions
– For the three-year period 22-24 Fabrizio Favale is nominated Italian Associate Artist of MILANoLTRE, Teatro Elfo-Puccini Milan
PRESS REVIEW
“Il coreografo poeta”
by Massimo Marino, Corriere della Sera 26/03/2014
“The mysterious embroidery of this dancer prince of the choreography and the philosophical «embroidery done on nothingness», Fabrizio Favale is a poet choreographer. His dance is capable of giving to the technique a philosophical and inner voice. There is no history: it is made up of weaves, of “imitations” of the wind, of nature, of the movement of animals, of impalpable and yet very concrete atmospheric variations, of hasty swirls. His company Le Supplici is from Bologna but, as often happens, it is easier to see it abroad, where it has won several awards. For Favale dance is a way to explore things, the universe. He writes “But we want to demonstrate that perhaps it is not man who is the favorite subject of dance, but something unattainable, stellar.” … The marvelous interpreters are together controlled and ready for hyperbolic metamorphoses made of a gesture. Another. A fire, a flame made of bodies, hands, arms, a slight suspension of time that grinds and transforms the presence of the body. A wind that drags and holds. A rise to the essence.”
CON LE SUPPLICI UN CIRCEO VULCANICO
di Rodolfo di Giammarco, la Repubblica 25/06/2018
Roma 23/06/2018 Rassegna “Grandi Pianure”
“In “Circeo” by Fabrizio Favale something bursts the exhalations of a volcano, on one side of the stage there are the installations of a couple of speleologists of eruptive faults, the reflections of lit craters can be glimpsed on the bottom-stage, and then the smooth and ice-made backdrop melts to give space to a wall of lava. In this context shaped by nature, twinned to an Iceland this mythical promontory of the Tyrrhenian Sea where Ulysses meets Circe, Favale materializes a choreography of rare anthropological force, a primitive upheaval which gives body, in addition to the two scientific performers mentioned, a group of seven brutal, virulent dancers, I would say mostly wild, with impressed in their skin the roughness of the ancestral men of the portraits of the naive genius Gino Covili. As if this were not enough, this beautiful, very mysterious and very telluric “Circeo” – a real international show with a co-production baptism at the Théatre National de la Danse Chaillot in Paris, and now landed in Teatro Argentina as part of the “Grandi Pianure” Roma – this work rakes zoomorphic presences, and adopts passages of interpreters camouflaged by skins of animals, as to evoke even a bestiary, a graffiti from a remote cave. And yet this work by Favale and his company Le Supplici, precisely because it is not narrative, because is dark or blinding, because is energetically tribal, I find it pervaded by a contemporaneity that metabolizes our unconscious, our aphasia, our hidden compulsiveness. It is another more brusque and otherwise corporative race than that of Jan Fabre’s warriors of beauty, the race of these intrepid explorers, synchronous anti-heroes, solitary wolves of the scene, but something similar to the DNA seems to me to exist, beyond the American roots that legitimately Favale attributes to his practice of overseas. Then, of course, some dynamics follow the serial cadences of the original sound-noise by Daniela Cattivelli and the assets chosen by the Mountains, by Sigur Ros, by Alex Somers, by Windy & Carl. But there is also a rhythm emitted by the anatomies of these creatures in captivity, in storm.”
Dance. The four traveling seasons of Fabrizio Favale
byGiuseppe Distefano, Artribune.com 08/06/2019
“With a wide-ranging peculiarity, of perceptive expansion, of organic mapping, of participatory “transhumance” of parables between poetry and reality, this is the project The Invisible Seasons created by Fabrizio Favale with the Compagnia Le Supplici. Taking part in even just one of the four choreographic performances over the course of a year, which mark the passage of the four seasons, is above all an experience. Of sharing. Where the landscape becomes food for the soul.
It is a physical immersion, outdoors, in natural, agricultural or industrial scenarios, which require silence, listening and a participatory gaze. From explorers. As is the choreographer Fabrizio Favale, who has always been dedicated to scouring geographical and natural landscapes with dance, evoking them on stage, in museums, or in other non-traditional locations, arousing views, concrete places and infinite spaces. Or experiencing the places directly. As, precisely, for the project The invisible seasons – infinite choreographic cycle (special project by Agorà with the artistic direction of Elena Di Gioia, and promoted by the Unione Reno Galliera, with the support of the Emilia-Romagna Region, produced by the Liberty Cultural Association), aimed at discovering “territories of enchantment and apparition”, as the choreographer himself defines them who, with nature, a source of continuous inspiration, cultivates a concrete and almost sensual relationship of symbiosis.”
“Calligraphy, light and impalpable hedonistic forms. Favale is the author of a warp so light that it is much more “ephemeral” than the dance itself”.
Carmelo Antonio Zapparrata, artearti.net
“What he draws is a quick and light gesture, which tames the time (all the time you need, up to almost immobility) and makes palpable the space with the twisting of the torso, the flickering of the arms and a rotary pulse of Oriental origin. It’s a dance almost sacred, full of thought and never superfluous, a volatile embroidery and for this reason even more precious.”
Maria Cecilia Bizzarri, DANZA & DANZA
“To easily understand what is meant when we talk about the “third landscape of dance”, one should participate in the “invisible seasons” created by Fabrizio Favale Le Supplici. In the fourth “summer” episode, for example, we are immersed in a creatural condition, in which the choreographic design merges with the landscape. Silence acts as a sounding board for the intimate rhythm of nature, in an extraordinarily touching symmetry between art and life.”
Fabio Acca, Theater Critic, Adjunct Professor at Bologna University
“To easily understand what is meant when we talk about the “third landscape of dance”, one should participate in the “invisible seasons” created by Fabrizio Favale Le Supplici. In the fourth “summer” episode, for example, we are immersed in a creatural condition, in which the choreographic design merges with the landscape. Silence acts as a sounding board for the intimate rhythm of nature, in an extraordinarily touching symmetry between art and life.”
Fabio Acca, Theater Critic, Adjunct Professor at Bologna University
“Le prodige italien, méconnu en France, présente à Chaillot la première hexagonale de Circeo,
une pièce chorégraphique tellurique et céleste. Huit danseurs virtuoses nous emportent dans leurs hypnotiques métamorphoses. Circeo est cette montagne italienne mythique qui surplombe la mer Tyrrhénienne, où le héros Ulysse rencontra la sorcière Circé. Les sources de Fabrizio Favale puisent ici en trois lieux géographiques – le mont Circé, le massif sous-marin Vavilov voisin, le volcan glaciaire islandais Hekla. Et son inspiration réside en la figure de la divine ensorceleuse, fille d’Hélios et magicienne présidant aux mutations humaines par des incantations, poisons et potions. L’artiste conçoit une danse « non-chorégraphique et spatiale » interprétée par huit hommes puissants : un mouvement originel dont il ne resterait que l’élémentaire circularité, déclinée en sensuelles arabesques et sinuosités. Le chorégraphe italien, remarqué avec Ossidiana lors de la Biennale de danse de Lyon 2016, ausculte ici les polarités de l’homme et du cosmos : vitesse et lenteur, nocturne et diurne, feu et glace. Depuis vingt ans, à Bologne et ailleurs, lui et ses « suppliants » (du nom de sa compagnie Le Supplici) explorent à travers la danse les motifs de l’univers, de sa poétique et de ses mystères.”
Mélanie Jouen, Official presentation at the Theatre National de la Danse Chaillot, Paris