Summer dance in 44 festivals

Here for the first time is BALLET2000’s
“Festivals Special”, the year’s seventh issue
added on to the six regular bi-monthly issues.
It’s special because it comes in one sole trilingual
edition for all our readers all over the
world: an exception because the magazine’s
standard International English Edition is published
completely in English (there is also an
Édition France and an Edizione Italia).
It’s also special because it’s entirely devoted
to the summer festivals all over Europe. Some
of them will already be underway when this
issue appears, but had we released it earlier
we’d have missed many of those programmes
that were not announced promptly; hence, we
opted to offer a more accurate and complete
picture of the three-month period. This isn’t
a practical “guide” (though the Calendar on
pages 58-65 will undoubtedly prove useful)
but, rather, a tour d’horizon of a long season
of “showcases” and creation venues that naturally
reflect the liveliest novelties on the current
world dance scene, with shows that we
shall perhaps be seeing again in the future.
Forty-four are but few compared to the
multitude of festivals and platforms around
Europe (in spite of the dramatic cuts to public
subsidies as a consequence – is it true? –
of the crisis). We’ve had to select from those
that provided accurate programme details.
It’s hardly surprising that most of them are
in Italy and France, countries that abound in tourist
resorts and have climates and historical sites suited
to open-air stages; nor that most of them feature
only contemporary dance, for a festival is
a moment for creation and discovery.