"A company is not only selling the dates of your creation but building a global cultural project."
Ezio Schiavulli is a passionate and smart artist. In his career as dancer he collaborated with several choreographers and directors. In 2007 he founded his own company, the Ez3, and he is the head of the choreography and direction of 15 creations. He is also the artistic director of Network Danza Puglia, a project to support the education and pedagogy of teachers and students.
-How did you build your own company?
“The EZ3 is based in Strasbourg, France. Today the company is mobile and has depended on the organization of the choreographer.
EZ3 was born in 2007, in the West of France. It was born for a need. I love to dance, and my first tool of communication and my strength is creation. In creation I feel reborn and I found all the intellectual and physical forces.
My first choreographic project was born before the company. A choreographer I worked with gave me a creation project, giving me a budget and the availability of the dance studios and of my colleagues. I was really lucky. There was a lot of complicity and trust. That was the first step. Then I took this project to a competition for young choreographers in Paris in 2005 and I won the first prize, receiving a sum of money for a new production. So I needed an administrative structure and so the French cultural association was born. Then, over the years, presenting the projects in several other professional spaces, has become a company recognized by the State and the Ministry. The Ministry, therefore, recognizes you as a company, and as such you must produce work, for different dancers, different technicians and administrators, and produce shows. Today, however, the demand for shows is smaller and the companies have increased, so it is more difficult. That’s my story, but then there’s a whole bunch of totally different ones. This has happened over several years and not in a single year, so it takes determination and perseverance. There are also many companies that are born within a year, because many choreographers create a project and around that project is created so much fame, leading immediately to the creation of a company and you can receive many funds.
I’ve learned so much about being a cultural enterprise on a territory, so how the company relates to a territory, what it means to produce culture, what it means to be at the service of a territory, of the country, and not just think about the ego around the creator. This has led me to work with handicapped people, with elderly people, with several guys who have never seen a theater. So, all of this allowed me to see the cultural world differently. A company is not only selling the dates of your creation but building a global cultural project. And for that, I choose dancers who have this sensitivity.”
-How did Network Danza Puglia started?
“It all came from my radical move from Paris to Bari. In this territory there was not the same Parisian dynamic, so I tried to bring my knowledge learned in France to this territory, where there was everything to build. Right from the start I tried to introduce the word "awareness", "territorial support", "cultural company", which did not exist here. I realized that there was a lack of cohesion: working with the territory, focusing on training and starting from schools. I spent so much energy to create this path that included so many young people and so many schools, to collaborate together. But what I maintain is that the Network Danza Puglia is not a training process for the "great dancer", because there are many academies that do this kind of work. My job, however, was to bind and connect students and schools, accompanying the most sensitive to know professional dance, choreographers who work hard every day, even if they are not known, but who are committed to carrying out outreach programs. Then, if there are guys who want to be professional dancers within this path they are welcome, but even if the guys want to do anything else in their future, I’m just as happy. I am of the opinion, however, that these young people will become good citizens with a look at culture. So we in the industry have won twice as much.”
-What fascinates you about choreographing?
“Choreography for me is a language where my intimate, personal and relational strength resides. One of the keywords is relationship, the exchange between me, my internal and external universe, but above all the transmission, of my internal universe, of my information, of my vision. During creation I enter another dimension and in that world I build a force, which is not only the gesture but the transmission of information. Creation is my clearest language.”
-What is the importance of improvisation?
“Today it is almost inevitable to talk about improvisation in training. There are few choreographers that give pure choreographic partitions and do not use 'improvisation'. Today in training, in my opinion, there must be a work on individual creativity, the elaboration of their own movement. Of course they must also learn to reproduce, to listen to music, to listen, but it is important that they also learn to self-manage their own body in free movement and also to make their own external information and know how to interpret and manage it in their own body.”
-How do you work in the creation of a piece?
“I like to be in permanent communication with the dancers: I like to listen to their opinion. I arrive the first day in the room and bring the dancers a large part of the information, with the texts I wrote, with drawings, with fabrics, photos, everything that will feed the information between me and the dancer. The dancer is the interpreter, so he needs as much information as possible. I like to give a warm-up lesson because I like to put the dancers in a state of energy, and I think it brings us all to cohabit the same energy in space, like understanding in which language to speak in that context.”
-What catches your attention in a dancer?
“Availability. For me a dancer must be ready to project, to dedicate and learn. To “dedicate” does not mean to be exploited, but to propose, not to be passively waiting for instructions: to be the proposal. Such a dancer, even if he has technical gaps, over time can become an essential source for a creation. Technique is important, but it’s not the first thing.”
-Why dance is important in society?
“In my opinion, not only dance, but all forms of art are fundamental today, even compared to what we are living. Art brings us back to the human relationship, to communication, to the need for relationship. So this need causes a territory to develop with a particular sensitivity, otherwise we would have so many war machines, without an emotion, a vision, a feeling, without the will to raise our heads and wonder about the world. All this is lacking without the vision of the artist. The arts and artists go to form, to educate the new society, is fundamental.”
-How much is important to fight for your own ideals?
“For me, an artist must also know how to get his hands dirty. An artist is not an elite of society, but is a role, like a doctor, a nurse, that must be completed within society. That’s why an artist has to be among the people, he has to chat, he has to listen, he has to take information, he cannot walk suspended in the air. You can’t stage beauty and disaster if you’re not in it.”
-Can you give some advice to young dancers?
“To always be curious. Curiosity is the antidote to the state of depression. Maintaining a constant state of curiosity in everyday life is difficult, because you fall into everyday life, into difficulty. And so the days become all the same. For young artists, you must continue to discover and discover.”
Thank you so much Ezio, it was so inspiring talking to you.