On Sunday, December 14 from 4:00 PM, the Teatro Franco Parenti in Milan hosts a double event presented under the banner of OVER DANCE MILANO.

At 4:00 PM, the performative outcome of the Pop Up workshop—led by Lara Guidetti for Over Dance Milano at the Zante Community House—featuring amateur performers over 65.

Following this, an open roundtable on the theme of longevity, open to all.

Sharing of the 1st Over Dance Milano Workshop

Choreography: Lara Guidetti
Assistant choreographer: Fabrizio Calanna
Music: King Biscuit Time, Andrea Capurso, Paolo Redaelli, Mattia Rio
Performers: the participants of the Pop Up program

Performance duration: approximately 30 minutes

A special thanks to the Casa di Quartiere Zante, in Via Zante 36, which generously and enthusiastically hosted Pop Up—the first workshop dedicated to people over 65 within the Over Dance Milano project—from October to December 2025.

Introduction
Irene Sartorelli – Assistant Director, Institutional Relations and Cultural Welfare | CCN/Aterballetto

Moderator
Elisabetta Donati – Head of Culture and Research | Fondazione Ravasi-Garzanti

Participants
Lamberto Bertolè – Councillor for Welfare and Health | City of Milan
Lara Guidetti – Artistic Director, Choreographer, and Dancer | Compagnia Sanpapié
Roberto Maria Macchi – Representative of the Great Age
Elena Fortunato – Biblioteca Gallaratese
Tobia Rossi – Playwright & Andrea Piazza – Director | Teatro Franco Parenti
Beatrice Ferrarini and Camilla Borghi – Voice Italia

An apparition. A suspended moment in which imagination becomes body, movement, shared presence. Pop Up does not present a finished result but rather a crossing: the living restitution of a process that expands from the individual to the collective, transforming experience into a sensitive landscape.

The dancers, all over 65, bring to the stage bodies that move through time, memories that settle and reignite through gesture. Every movement arises from listening — from what emerges — from an inner source that finds form in shared space.
There is no representation, only appearing. No storytelling, only happening.

The live music of King Biscuit Time accompanies and amplifies the movement not as mere background but as a complicit presence — a sonic body that weaves rhythm and vibration, expanding each gesture and every shared pulse. Sound and body respond to each other, merge, and propel one another toward the unexpected.

What comes to life before the audience is a great carousel of possible selves: a temporary community that forms and dissolves, leaving behind an echo, a trace, a shared breath.

Lara Guidetti, Choreographer

The new life stages unfolding as life expectancy increases are in search of orientation maps. We need signposts to recognize that aging is a process that has been within us since the very first day of life and that, when this time becomes long, it reflects biographical diversity even more strongly — profiles that cannot be defined solely by generational, class, or gender differences, but by the continuous work of self-construction: giving meaning, selecting, mediating, in relation to external circumstances.

For several years now, culture has been identified as a system that integrates health, community, and sense of purpose. Every stage of life can be enriched by cultural experiences that enhance well-being and participation.

Over Dance Milano, conceived by CCN/Aterballetto in collaboration with Fondazione Ravasi Garzanti, proposes a model of cultural welfare that brings together art, well-being, and community, transforming community spaces into places of creation and care. The project aims to promote the participation of people over 65 in cultural activities, recognizing dance as a tool to improve quality of life.
Free dance workshops are offered in several community centers in Milan, thanks to funding from Fondazione Cariplo, led by choreographers who work with participants to build inclusive artistic pathways.

To present the results of the first workshop, held at the Zante community center and led by choreographer Lara Guidetti, a roundtable has been organized. Starting from the performance and from the monitoring outcomes developed by Voice Italia, the discussion opens toward other experiences taking place in Milan: proximity-based activities in a public library, self-produced artistic projects, theatre workshops, and co-design actions promoted by the City of Milan.

Elisabetta Donati, Head of Culture and Research | Fondazione Ravasi-Garzanti