As part of La Prima Danza, a site-specific project
a creation by Damiano Ottavio Bigi
performers Lu Ying-Chien, Lee Kuan-Lin / Hung Dance Taiwan, Vincenzo Criniti, Cristian Magurano / Company EgriBiancoDanza, Yingyu Lyu
music Milena Punzi, Andrea Geremia / Centro di ricerca, produzione e didattica musicale Tempo Reale
produced by Fondazione Fabbrica Europa per le arti contemporanee as part of Music and Dance in the Florentine Cenacles, produced with the Regional Directorate of National Museums of Tuscany of the Ministry of Culture and of SHIFT Shaping Harmony, Innovating Forms & Thought, funded by the European Commission’s Creative Europe program
project direction Maurizia Settembri
production Elisa Godani with Greta Poli
with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Department for Cultural Activities Regional Directorate of National Museums of Tuscany (Florence), Taiwan Ministry of Culture
partners Secret Florence | Florence Dance Festival | Municipality of Florence | CROSS Festival Verbania | Egri Danza CRID Foundation | Hung Taiwan Dance Company
year 2025
duration 55‘
La Prima Danza is a site-specific contemporary dance project born from the collaboration between Fondazione Fabbrica Europa and Bigi Paoletti/Fritz Company, led by Damiano Ottavio Bigi and Alessandra Paoletti. The project aims to transform spaces of historical and artistic heritage into performative experience settings articulated in several chapters, fostering a deep connection between territory, place, artwork, and audience through dance.
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[en] À Coups de Marteau, conceived as an itinerant performance, the project unfolded in Florence in September 2025 within the Cloister and the Cenacolo of Ognissanti. Directed by Damiano Ottavio Bigi and Alessandra Paoletti, it brought together dancers from Hung Dance (Taiwan) and EgriBiancoDanza Company (Italy), alongside musicians from Tempo Reale Centre for Research, Production, and Education in Music.
The performance unfolds as a ritual traversal of architectural space, understood not merely as a physical site but as a guide for the body and a symbolic map. Architecture becomes both an orienting force and a mirror of an inner journey, shaping movement while reflecting a process of introspection.
The audience is invited to follow a shared pathway in which walking through space coincides with a gradual withdrawal from the external world. The performance traces a passage from dispersion toward a state of gathering, suspension and listening, generating an “other” time—set apart from ordinary experience—within which to encounter the memory of the place and one’s own presence.
Live music plays a central structuring role: it does not accompany movement but rather generates it, diverts it, and questions it. Sound and body engage in a continuous dialogue, mutually influencing one another while adapting to the acoustics, history, artworks, and materiality of the spaces traversed.
What emerges is a spatial dramaturgy in which gesture, sound, and place intertwine, giving rise to a collective and immersive experience.
[it] À Coups de Marteau, concepito come performance itinerante, si è svolto a Firenze nel settembre 2025, all’interno del Chiostro e del Cenacolo di Ognissanti. Diretto da Damiano Ottavio Bigi e Alessandra Paoletti, ha riunito danzatori della Hung Dance (Taiwan) e della EgriBiancoDanza Company (Italia), insieme a musicisti del Centro di ricerca, produzione e didattica musicale Tempo Reale.
La performance nasce come un attraversamento rituale di uno spazio architettonico, inteso non solo come luogo fisico, ma come guida per il corpo e mappa simbolica. Un contesto in cui l’architettura orienta il corpo e, allo stesso tempo, riflette un percorso interiore.
Il pubblico è qui invitato a muoversi lungo un itinerario, in cui il cammino nello spazio coincide con un processo di progressiva sottrazione dal mondo esterno. La performance accompagna il passaggio dal caos e dalla dispersione a una condizione di raccoglimento, sospensione e ascolto, generando un tempo altro, separato, in cui confrontarsi con sé, con la memoria del luogo e con la propria presenza.
La musica dal vivo assume un ruolo strutturante: non accompagna il movimento, ma lo genera, lo devia, lo interroga. Suono e corpo entrano in un dialogo costante, influenzandosi reciprocamente e adattandosi all’acustica, alla storia e alla materia dello spazio attraversato. Ne emerge una drammaturgia spaziale in cui gesto, suono e luogo si intrecciano in un’esperienza collettiva.
▸ trailer
▸ performances
17 September
ITALY / Florence / FABBRICA EUROPA FESTIVAL / Cenacolo Hall and Ognissanti Cloister
18 September
ITALY / Florence / FABBRICA EUROPA FESTIVAL / Cenacolo Hall and Ognissanti Cloister
19 September
ITALY / Florence / FABBRICA EUROPA FESTIVAL / Cenacolo Hall and Ognissanti Cloister
20 September
ITALY / Florence / FABBRICA EUROPA FESTIVAL / Cenacolo Hall and Ognissanti Cloister
▸ press
« Fabbrica Europa: the first dance is prayer and contemplation. The site-specific project at Ognissanti by Damiano Bigi and Alessandra Paoletti
Florence – There is a fundamental yet risky protagonist in site-specific dance projects: the space in which they unfold. It may sound like a tautology, but take note: the more a space preserves great art and conveys the weight of the human experience that has inhabited it over the centuries, the more the choreographic creation assumes the responsibility of adding a further emotion for the spectator. A third level of reception, after observation and the admiration of intellectual elaboration.
Consider the cloister and the Cenacolo of Ognissanti, where in these days the project La prima danza à coups de marteau 1° step. Open doors / Sguardo sul processo creativo comes to life, with creations by Damiano Ottavio Bigi, choreographer and dancer, and Alessandra Paoletti, dramaturge and director, within the 32nd edition of the Fabbrica Europa festival.
Here we find ourselves in contact not only with architectural and pictorial masterpieces of the Renaissance (Ghirlandaio) and the Baroque (Giovanni da Sangiovanni), but also with centuries of Franciscan spirituality—of “itineraries” of contemplation of the divine and of the practice of love towards the fragile, the poor, the defenceless.Thus, in this setting, the specificity of the place—a jewel of Florence’s artistic heritage—calls dance to a demanding challenge in interpretation and quality. “We tried to bring people into a different time by entering into dialogue with the contemplative space,” Paoletti said at the conclusion of the performance.
The experiment succeeded because the authors—in the language of gesture and in the technique of movement—positioned themselves on a universal cultural plane, thanks to dancers coming from diverse international experiences: Vincenzo Criniti and Cristian Magurano of the EgriBiancoDanza Company, together with the Chinese performer Yingyu Lyu, the performers Lu Ying-Chien and Lee Kuan-Lin, and the choreographer Lai Hung-Chung of Hung Dance, Taiwan.
Accompanied live by the musicians Milena Punzi (cellist) and Andrea Geremia (percussion) of the Tempo Reale Centre for musical research, production and education, and followed by the spectators, the six dancers moved through part of the cloister with gestures beyond time and place, with references to the Middle Ages but also to Buddhist East. On the threshold of the Cenacolo entrance, two of them enacted rituals of purification and approach to the sacred space. Then, like priests, the dancers took the spectators by the hand and seated them with their eyes closed, while Milena Punzi filled the space with the painful and nostalgic resonances of the cello.
With the audience facing forward again, a form of prayer unfolded in waves and figures, in dialogue with the centuries of spirituality of the Franciscan convent. Back in the cloister, the theme of the third scene was the futile attempt of the individual to escape the responsibility of transferring the experience of prayer into reality.»
[Piero Meucci / thedotcultura – Read more]
