Luna Cenere

Four dancers are lying on their backs on the floor, their arms stretched upwards.

Artistic residence by Luna Cenere | ph Federico Gazza

In front of the Campana dei Caduti in Rovereto, numerous human bodies are lying on the ground, facing upwards, naked. Their arrangement in space is orderly.

Genealogia | ph Sarah Melchiori

Two parallel rows of human bodies, shot frontally. The performers, wearing only flesh-colored underwear, stretch their arms and torso toward the center, trying to push themselves toward the opposite row.

Genealogia | ph Angela Onorati

Several performers are seen with their backs to the camera, leaning forward with their torso and arms in a circle above their heads. They wear only flesh-colored underwear. The performance takes place outdoors.

Genealogia | ph Angela Onorati

A cliff on the sea. Five naked human bodies are sitting among the rocks with their backs to the camera. The sky is cloudy.

Genealogia | ph Estevan Reder

Luna Cenere is a dancer and author born in Naples. After studying at SEAD, Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance (Austria) she participated in the creations of Anton Lacky (Anton Lacky Company/ Les Slovaks Collective) and Josef Frucek (Rootlessroot) and in international festivals such as Il Festival Deltebre Danza, Impulstanz and the Venice Biennale. In 2014 she worked with Simone Forti and Anton Lacky. In 2016 she became a member of Virgilio Sieni Company (Italy) in projects such as La Mer and Il Cantico dei Cantici.

Author of Kokoro, a show produced by Compagnia Korper as a project part of the ANTICORPI XL network, selected for AEROWAVES TWENTY18', winner of the Best Choreography Award of Solocoreografico 2017 and selected for NID Platform 2019.

She is a certified contemporary dance teacher at SEAD and leads workshops and improvisation classes. She currently lives between Italy and Belgium focusing on her work as a performer and author.

Luna Cenere, associated artist of Oriente Occidente since 2019, has carried out a research project on the human body.

An artistic, choreographic and human experiment entitled Genealogia (Genealogy) that involves amateurs and non-professionals of the territory with whom to undertake in-depth research and implement a process of audience development. The choreographer wishes to bring people from different backgrounds closer to her work in order to enhance her artistic practice through exchange and encounters with the participants in the project.

In 2020, due to the Coronavirus, Luna Cenere rethought her work and her research on the body, renaming her creation "time specific". A new declination without contact between bodies and a new timing of rehearsals. A reassessment of the project developed around the practice of meeting through seminars: to reason about the body, about its physical-philosophical status, to practice nudity as a natural condition.

After an early period of online theory sessions, in August 2020 the choreographer spent an artistic residence in Rovereto, working with a group of about 25 amateurs divided into groups.

From the period of research a new creation was born, as a result of the traumatic experience lived and inspired by the space of the Campana dei Caduti in Rovereto, where the work was then presented to the public during the 2020 edition of Oriente Occidente Dance Festival with the title Genealogia_time specific.

With this performance Luna Cenere won the Danza&Danza Award as Emerging Choreographer 2020.

For me it is like starting all over again; the previous stages of Genealogy were conducted before the pandemic. Now everything is different: in Rovereto a new research will begin, the result of the traumatic experience we have lived through. And the impact will be even stronger in its 'setting' at the Campana dei Caduti, a symbolic, historical place of commemoration of suffering and loss. I imagine a collective ritual with the human as its focus. The space of the Bell and the natural light of twilight will allow the group a unique visual, sound, spatial and glance relationship even in the absence of physical contact.

- Luna Cenere

Luna Cenere spends her first period of artistic residency in the spaces of Oriente Occidente Studio in May 2019.

Together with her performers, the choreographer explores the concept of the body as place and landscape, as space and limit. Through physical experiences within a space of empirical research, the limit of our thinking about the body is tested and challenged. This is done through a research practice that contemplates discussion, reading and the genesis of thought from which a creative process can then arise.

During the first months of the project's research, the choreographic pattern was created. This first study is entitled: Zoé - appunti sulla nuda vita (notes on bare life) and was presented as a work in progress at Oriente Occidente Dance Festival 2019.

lunacenere.com