REACHING

REACHING, the most recent work by choreographer and artist Michele Rizzo, continues the long-term research on rave culture in relation to the practices of dance and performance that gave body to Rizzo’s 2018 work HIGHER xtn. REACHING distills and reconfigures the moments and spaces that characterize the experience of nightlife. Within the performance, 14 performers approach each other through a slow-paced choreography punctuated by a score composed by Billy Bultheel and a light design by Theresa Baumgartner.

Rizzo approaches concepts of care, unison and transcendence, unfolding in a landscape of moving bodies. In an introspective yet vigorous choreography of friction and coalescence, REACHING discloses the space hidden within and around the emotions of ecstasy, euphoria, and acceleration by unveiling allusions to desire and the secret will of each individual.
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The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam has enjoyed a longstanding relationship with Rizzo. In 2018 the museum debuted Rizzo’s acclaimed work HIGHER xtn. in the context of Freedom of Movement: the 2018 Municipal Art Acquisitions, and acquired this work for the museum’s collection. In 2021 Rizzo contributed the video work Rest (2021), which draws on the choreographic work of the same title (2020), to the Stedelijk’s time-based media commissions program Sketches for the Future.

The presentation of Rizzo’s REACHING is part of an ongoing collaboration between Julidans and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Past collaborations include Ligia Lewis’s minor matter (2017), Alex Baczynski-Jenkins’ Us Swerve (2019), and Andreas Hannes’s Tremble (2021).

REACHING was created in October 2021 at KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, commissioned by KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Julia Stoschek Collection.