FEDORA - Mont Ventoux

Van Cleef & Arpels
Dance Prize
Winner 2022

Mont Ventoux

Spain
Kor'Sia

Mont Ventoux. © Marianne Menke i

Winner of the FEDORA - VAN CLEEF & ARPELS Dance Prize
€100,000 with the support of Van Cleef & Arpels

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Inspired by Petrarch's Ascent of Mont Ventoux, the KOR'SIA collective seeks answers from the humanist past for the conflicts being proposed to us by a 21st-century paradigm shift: the construction of an individual capable of rebuilding themselves and the planet.

World Premiere: 19 October 2023 - Madrid, Spain

Presentation

Everything is overcome by obstinate work.

Francesco Petrarca (1336)

With Mount Ventoux, the Kor'sia Collective revisits the work that Francesco Petrarca wrote in 1336, Ascent to Mont Ventoux, apparently just a letter recounting the ascent to a mountain on any other April afternoon.

Through an ascent disguised in simplicity, Petrarca offers an alternative to the faith of the world, an ascending journey for humanity to elude and leave behind the dark years of the Middle Age; bringing about a paradigmatic shift to the world to come, humanism.

As the Kor'sia Collective perceives it, this story, Mont Ventoux, still offers us the possibility of learning from the past, which can be transformed into a better experience of the present, and therefore in the construction of a better future for all and all.

Today, we, the people who live together on the planet, seven centuries later and in greater acceleration, typical of the times we live in, also perceive the urgent need for change. We are facing the destabilization of the structures that up to now supported us as a community and as humanity, and witnessing the transformation of a too uncertain future.

Petrarca, already warned: "We have to wake up from lethargy, get out of the molds!". Under this mantra, the Kor'sia Collective wants to collaborate in giving voice again to these words that today resonate with importance:

Ascend the mountain.

Recover our values.

Do a mass philanthropic exercise.

Put humanity and the nature that precedes back in the center.

What a better way to do so than through dancing bodies.

Mount Ventoux, is a full-evening performance created by the young Kor'sia Collective with the support of Conde Duque Contemporary Culture Center (Spain), Tanzplattform Rhein Main (Germany), Hessisches Staatsballet (Germany), Roma Europa Festival (Italy), The Watermill Center (USA), Tanz Bozen Bolzano Danza (Italy), Grec Festival- Barcelona Festival (Spain) Tero Saarinen Company (Fi ), Istituto Italiano di Cultura de Madrid (Spain) OperaEstate Festival Veneto -

Video Presentation

Artistic Team

The Mont Ventoux project is supported by a unique team of professionals who have been working together for several years and achieving excellent results. Agnés López Río, professor of Performing Arts, will be in charge of dramaturgy. Dramaturgical assistance will be provided by Giuseppe Dagostino. Luca Guarini, creative and founder/editor-in-chief of Dust Magazine, will be in charge of wardrobe and creating links with haute couture houses. Sets and lighting will be created by Amber Vandenhoeck, set and lighting designer, based in Antwerp, Belgium. Alejandro da Rocha will be in charge of music. The KOR'SIA team is rounded out by nine professional and emerging performers. As KOR'SIA collective, we understand that the idea of a univocal "I", conformed or fully configured in a stable and finite way, has ceased to "be" and prevail, transforming the paradigm that shapes the ontology of what we understand by "body" in the twenty-first century, from every field: psychology, philosophy, anthropology, medicine, and science; and this is irremediably transforming that which had been considered as univocal until now, into an amalgam of nomadic subjectivities or identities of flux. Throughout the years, KOR'SIA has received numerous awards for its choreography: International Choreography Competition New York-Burgos; Certamen Coreográfico de Madrid, Madrid; Copenhagen International Choreography Competition, Copenhagen, Danemark, 2015; Concours Chorégraphique Contemporain Jeunes Compagnies, France, Conseil Régional de Bourgogne & Synodales, Sens, France; Bordeaux National Opera’s Ballet; the Malandain Ballet Biarritz with the CCN Ballet de l’Opéra national du Rhin; Tanz Plattform Bern; and Premio Positano.