Photographs by Darrin Zammit-Lupi (1-3), and Joe Smith (4-5)

Qalbna

Production team

Created and organised by: ŻfinMalta Dance Ensemble, Valletta 2018

Choreography: Paolo Mangiola

Music: Cyprian Cassar

Visual and light effects: Blaze Animation

Geographers of Solitude

Aerial

PRODUCTION TEAM

Choreography: Paolo Mangiola

Music: John Cage: In a Landscape, John Adams: China Gates, Ezio Bosso: Following a Bird Live Piano: Tricia Dawn Williams

Light design: Dali Aguerbi Costumes: Paolo Mangiola

Dates & Times: 21/22/23 October, 19:30

Venue: Valletta Campus Theatre

Duration: 60 minutes

Age: 8+

Choreography: Paolo Mangiola, in collaboration with the company dancers

Original Score: Goya

Visual Artist/Set Design: Matthew Attard

Dramaturgy: Victor Jacono

Lighting design: Moritz Zavan Stoekle

Costume Design: Louie Noire and Emma Walker

Capturing Bela

Capturing Bela begins a series of studies investigating the compositional patterns found in music, by analysing the works of modern composers. This first short work, commissioned by Malta International Arts festival, is an homage to the unique compositional abilities of Béla Bartók, performed in a series of dances that adapt to his famous String Quartet Number Four, played live by the Boho String Quartet. Using unexpected change of rhythm in the body and an unusual and asymmetrical spatial pattern, these choreographic compositions are an exercise in capturing and expressing the beauty and complexity of Bartók’s music.

Commissioned by Malta International Arts Festival.

Choreography: Paolo Mangiola

Cast: 10 dancers

Original score: Béla Bartók, String Quartet Number Four, performed live by the Boho4 string quartet

Costumes: Louie Noir

Photography: Matthew Mirabelli

Duration: 26 minutes

Age: 5+

Intimate Żfin

Intimate Żfin is where music meets dance in unexpected spaces. It is an opportunity to see the company’s extraordinary dancers up close in a series of choreographic miniatures created by ŻfinMalta’s Artistic Director Paolo Mangiola. Intimate Żfin unfolds through a series of dance sketches, creating a dialogue between the choreography, music, and architecture. Performing live in the space, Alexandra Alden and her band focus on the themes of belonging and home. Songs are from the album ‘Leads to Love’ which was released in autumn 2021. The band is made up of both Maltese and Dutch members, with whom Alden has collaborated closely on the album. True to its title, Intimate Żfin is an experience to be performed in unconventional spaces to small audiences of 100-120 people per night. Such spaces can include palazzos, libraries, and museums.

Supported by Palazzo Parisio

Choreography: Paolo Mangiola, in collaboration with the company dancers

Cast: 10 dancers

Music: Alexandra Alden – vocals & acoustic guitar; Daniel Van Der Duim – keyboards, backing vocals and samples; Luke Briffa – drums; Jurriaan De Kok – acoustic and electric bass; Jimmy Bartolo – electric guitar and effects

Lighting design: Moritz Zavan Stoeckle

Costumes: Julia Boikova

Light Design: Moritz Zavan Stoeckle

Duration: 60 minutes

Age: 5+

Twisting Landscapes

Twisting Landscapes is a chamber work for clarinet, violin, and piano written by Japanese Composer Makiko Kinoshita in 2004. Taking around 16 minutes to complete, the composition has three movements, which follow a rhythmic-atmospheric-rhythmic structure.

As a starting point for this piece, Mangiola looked at fractal behaviour and activity in nature. The landscapes of the score are explored through the composition of trios, duets, and ensemble resulting in an unpredictable dialogue with the music score.

Kinoshita, who studied composition at the Tokyo University of the Arts, is particularly renowned for this type of choral music, however, she has also written pieces for individual instruments, chamber ensembles, and orchestra. On top of Twisting Landscapes, other notable works by the composer are Gothic (for wind band), Circuit of Dream (piano suite), and The Trembling Moon (for percussion ensemble), the latter of which is also part of her official discography made up of four albums.

TWISTING LANDSCAPES is in collaboration with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra and produced by the Malta International Arts Festival

Choreography: Paolo Mangiola in collaboration with the ŻfinMalta dancers

Video Direction: Paolo Mangiola

Musicians: Giuseppe Recchia – clarinet, Nadine Galea – violin, Tricia Dawn Williams – piano

Light design: Paolo Mangiola

Cast: 11 dancers

Music: Makiko Kinoshita Twisting Landscapes for clarinet, violin and piano

Filming and Editing: Sebio Aquilina Audio Visual

Duration: 17 mins

Age: 5+

Mishima

String Quartet No. 3 by Philip Glass was originally composed for Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, a 1985 American biopic about the legendary Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, who famously attempted a coup and then committed suicide by seppuku.

The choreography, made for the film, investigates the notion of removal. Using the visual metaphor of a narrowing stream, the dancers find their way out of a repeating structure while the audience’s gaze is guided through the camera. Tension is created through the juxtaposition of dance and score.

Through each of the six movements of the concert version of the quartet, the music corresponds with a particular event or person from Mishima’s life. The three sections presented in this concert include the pensive first movement, primarily consisting of variations of a repeated minor-mode harmonic progression, builds on a structure emphasizing Glass’ characteristic use of shifts between duple and triple metrical accentuations. The fifth movement alternates between pulsed chords and rich polyphonies while the final movement circles around familiar chordal progressions underneath a lush violin line torn between rapid arpeggiation and a drawn-out, expressive melody on a two-note motif.

MISHIMA is in collaboration with the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra and produced by the Malta International Arts Festival

Choreography: Paolo Mangiola in collaboration with the ŻfinMalta dancers

Video Direction: Paolo Mangiola

Cast: 11 dancers

Musicians: Marcelline Agius – violin/Klara Nazaj – violin/Nadia Debono – viola/Ákos Kertész– cello

Light design: Paolo Mangiola

Music: Philip Glass String Quartet No. 3 “Mishima” (I)1957 – Award Montage (V) Blood Oath (VI) Mishima/Closing

Filming and Editing Sebio Aquilina Audio Visual

Duration: 10 mins

Age: 5+

NUOVA FIGURA is performed as part of ŻfinDays 2023: 1 DOUBLE BILL, 2 FULL LENGTH WORKS, OVER TWO WEEKENDS

ŻfinDays is an annual programme of works by choreographers who are currently in the spotlight on the international dance stage. Introduced in 2019 by ŻfinMalta’s Artistic Director Paolo Mangiola, ŻfinDays has become one of the company’s annual signature programmes, exposing ŻfinMalta’s company dancers, and its audiences, to the extraordinary diversity of talent on the European choreographic scene. For the first time, ŻfinDays 2023 will run over two weekends, each weekend featuring the D’Agostin/Mangiola double bill on the first night, and one full length work on the following two nights.

Nuova Figura

Nuova Figura charts the choreographic journey of Mangiola and the dancers, exploring the human gaze and images we create of our world. The work takes as its starting point the world map of the cosmos drawn in 1603 by Gozitan cartographer, astronomer, and astrologer, Antonino Saliba. In this extraordinary document Saliba combined ancient pagan and medieval Christian cosmology with Renaissance beliefs and experiences. He imagined a world that appears at once orderly and chaotic, spiritual and temporal, familiar and fantastic; filled with decorative hemispheres, rings of fire, demons, salamanders, and people digging into the earth.

Nuova Figura transposes these images into a contemporary context. A multi-layered canon of words and movement emerges, mapping our present-day image of the world. The demons of our time unfold in the densely atmospheric space – the over-forming of our nature, the consequences of the pandemic and the effects of war – as circular, explorative movements simultaneously reveal our capacity to move forward with hope and a desire for something better to come. A work inspired by Antonio Saliba’s celestial map of the universe, held in the collection of Heritage Malta.

Commissioned and funded by the Ministry for Gozo.

Date & Time: 17 & 24 FEBRUARY 2023, 19:30

VENUE: Valletta Campus Theatre

Duration: 30 mins

Age: 5+

Choreography: Paolo Mangiola, in collaboration with the company dancers

Cast: 11 dancers

Set design: Jacob Saliba

Dramaturg: Thomas Schaupp

Original score: INSYK Collective
Light design: Moritz Zavan Stoeckle

Costumes: Jeandor Farrugia

Dramaturg: Thomas Schaupp

Duration: 30 mins

Age: 5+

Nuova Figura has been specially commissioned and funded by the Ministry for Gozo.

Aħna

Aħna is a dance film, choreographed by Paolo Mangiola, Artistic Director of ŻfinMalta, directed by award-winning director and filmmaker, James Vernon, and performed by the company dancers of ŻfinMalta, Malta’s national dance company. The work has been created especially for the camera and is inspired by Malta’s limestone and its function.

As suggested by the name, Aħna sets out to evoke a feeling of togetherness, through a material which defines this country’s rich landscape and its culture. From the oldest free-standing temples in the world to fortifications, the rubble walls outlining the countryside, churches, palazzos and townhouses, Malta’s history is constructed of limestone.

Of this important new work for the company, Paolo Mangiola says: “As the only exploitable mineral resource the Maltese Islands has, I wanted to create a work that reminds us of the value of this beautiful stone, which also protects us and forms the spaces in which we interact, move and grow together.” Aħna is the first part in a trilogy of films exploring Malta’s culture through its landscape.

Aħna is the first part in a trilogy of films exploring Malta’s culture through its landscape.

Aħna was filmed with the generous support of Mark Bonello Quarries.

Choreography: Paolo Mangiola in collaboration with the dancers

Director and filmmaker: James Vernon

Music: ‘Adams : Harmonielehre 1 First Movement’ Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal

Conductor: Kent Nagano Harmonielehere (J. C. Adams) © Assoc. Music Publishers Inc.

Costumes: Julia Boikova

Dancers: Andrea Martín Albert, Tara Dalli, Felix Deepen, Nicola Micallef, Keith Micallef, Simon Riccardi-Zani, Calvin Rüth, Simon Van Heddegem, Amber van Veen

Producer: Nicole Bearman

Duration: 18 minutes