Caracalla Danza

CARACALLA DANZA
FIRST EDITION · SEPTEMBER 26–28

A new initiative by the Special Superintendency of Rome and CCN/Aterballetto
Guest company: Gauthier Dance // Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart

In collaboration with Romaeuropa Festival 2025

An extraordinary site, with its archaeological heritage unique in the world, has since 2024 hosted a stage suspended above a pool of water—an installation created to bring water, its essential element, back to the Baths of Caracalla, where the monument is reflected.

With Caracalla Danza, the Special Superintendency of Rome, in co-design with CCN/Aterballetto—returning to the space it inaugurated on April 13, 2024, to the notes of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue—places dance at the center of a new model for enhancing a unique heritage site.

CCN/Aterballetto will perform the lunar duet Reconciliatio by Angelin Preljocaj and present the world premiere of a new creation by Diego Tortelli, conceived to be danced in the water itself. The stage will also be shared with one of Europe’s leading companies, Gauthier Dance // Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, directed by Eric Gauthier, performing works by Marco Goecke, Hofesh Shechter, and Sharon Eyal.

On September 26, 27, and 28, Caracalla Danza will be launched with three evenings that, in the coming years, will establish themselves as a recurring September event, following the major restoration works at the Baths of Caracalla.

INFO & TICKETS

The performances will begin shortly before sunset, approximately between 5:45 pm and 6:00 pm. Admission to the stage area will be possible starting at 5:00 pm. Entry to the seating area will not be permitted once the performance has started.

Tickets:
From €20

Tickets available from September 3 on
Musei Italiani:
www.museiitaliani.it
App Musei Italiani available on Google Play and on App Store

EVENING PROGRAM

With the dancers of Gauthier Dance // Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart. Rome premiere.

Choreography and Costumes: Sharon Eyal
Sound Design: Josef Laimon
Music: Eliza
Lighting Design: Alon Cohen
Assistant to the Choreographer: Clyde Emmanuel Archer

With ALONE, Sharon Eyal returns to the large ensemble that made her renowned. The choreographer demonstrates the hypnotic power of synchrony and the extraordinary dynamics of a body-as-machine organism. Subtle variations or serial transformations disrupt the order of her groups of dancers; individuals break free from the repetitive patterns of an apparently post-human society.

With two dancers of Gauthier Dance // Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart. Rome premiere.

Choreography: Marco Goecke
Music: Mercedes Sosa
Lighting Design: Mario Daszenies
Costumes: Michaela Springer

Marco Goecke’s creation stands out for its precision and energy. Set to the powerful music of Mercedes Sosa, this duet unfolds in a performance full of dynamic movement and emotional tension, captivating the audience from the very first moment.

 

With Estelle Bovay and Arianna Kob, dancers of CCN/Aterballetto. Rome premiere

Choreography: Angelin Preljocaj
Music: Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 14 “Moonlight”
Costumes: Igor Chapurin
Lighting: Cécile Giovansili
Assistant to the Choreographer: Claudia De Smet
Restaging from the 2010 creation Suivront mille ans de calme
Production: Fondazione Nazionale della Danza / Aterballetto
Co-production: Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Dance, the art of the unspeakable par excellence, has the delicate power to reveal our fears, anxieties, and hopes by evoking them. The duet chosen to embody the theme of reconciliation is drawn from Suivront mille ans de calme (A Thousand Years of Calm Will Follow), a work imbued with a poetic and impressionistic vein, inspired by an attentive though non-literal reading of the Apocalypse.

For the choreographer, neither in the original work nor in this female duet—adapted for Memorare 2024 at the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna—should one seek precise references to St. John’s text. As the etymology of the word apocalypse suggests—“to lift the veil”—it is instead a matter of revealing, uncovering, bringing to light elements present in our world yet hidden from our gaze. These emerge, visible and invisible, in the delicate relationship between the two protagonists of the duet.

With the dancers of Gauthier Dance // Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart. Rome premiere

Choreography: Marco Goecke
Lighting Design: Udo Haberland
Costumes: Michaela Springer
Music: Antony and the Johnsons

The initial spark that led Marco Goecke toward dance came from the legendary company of his hometown, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. Although he only met the pioneer of dance-theatre a few times, she nevertheless played an important role in his career—even long after he had left Wuppertal. In 2004, she invited the young choreographer to present his works Blushing and Mopey at the festival 30 Years of Tanztheater Wuppertal. To this day, Goecke’s gratitude is evident when he speaks of how much that trust meant to him. His solo Infant Spirit is a tribute to Pina Bausch, to whom the choreographer owes so much.

With the dancers of Gauthier Dance // Theaterhaus Stuttgart. Italian premiere

Choreography and Composition: Hofesh Shechter
Lighting Design: Mario Daszenies
Costumes: Gudrun Schretzmeier & Hofesh Shechter
Rehearsal Director: Kim Kohlmann

Eric Gauthier asked Hofesh Shechter, resident artist of his company, to create a choreography that could stand as an independent work—adaptable for touring and ideally suited for outdoor performances. The goal was to produce a truly accessible piece, one that would bring contemporary dance especially to younger audiences.

For those familiar with Shechter, it comes as no surprise that he embraced this challenge with ease—particularly since the origins of Bonus Track lie precisely in an outreach project. Some time ago, Shechter had adapted elements of his choreography Clowns for a series of open-air performances in London with a reduced cast of eight dancers. From that foundation, he created a new version tailor-made for and with Gauthier Dance, also reworking his own soundtrack—once again, as always, original.

With Estelle Bovay and Arianna Kob, dancers of CCN/Aterballetto

Choreography: Diego Tortelli
Costumes: Sportmax
Music: Weyes Blood
New production created especially for the Baths of Caracalla, world premiere

Limen (from the Latin: threshold — between real and reflected, between presence and dissolution) is a choreographic dialogue between two female presences emerging from the veil of water as if from an invisible threshold. They mirror each other, brush against one another, seek and dissolve, like unstable reflections on the liquid skin of the surface.

Their dance moves along the boundary — between body and echo, between gesture and memory, between what appears and what fades away. The work reactivates the memory of the site — once a temple of the body, of care, of collective ritual — and transforms it into an intimate, circular, almost whispered gesture. The two dancers do not embody characters, but mirrored forces, twin archetypes seeking one another without ever fully coinciding, like two halves of a reflected image trembling in the water.

Gauthier Dance // Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart is a young and dynamic company of 16 highly individual and versatile artists, led by dancer, choreographer, musician, and charismatic dance ambassador Eric Gauthier. Founded in October 2007, the company quickly established itself on the German dance scene and has long since become an internationally recognized name.

Its repertoire includes works by Gauthier himself as well as by renowned contemporary choreographers such as Mauro Bigonzetti, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Marie Chouinard, Sharon Eyal, Andonis Foniadakis, William Forsythe, Itzik Galili, Jiří Kylián, Lightfoot/León, Hans van Manen, Marcos Morau, Ohad Naharin, and Sasha Waltz.

In addition to performances at its home base Theaterhaus Stuttgart, the company regularly tours major international dance capitals, including Toronto, New York, Tel Aviv, Venice, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, Munich, Québec City, Montréal, Berlin, and Chicago. Gauthier Dance // Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart was highlighted as a “German Highlight” in the 2022 yearbook of the specialist magazine tanz.

Alongside its growing acclaim, Gauthier Dance has strengthened collaborations with world-renowned choreographers—especially with resident artists Marco Goecke (January 2019 to summer 2023), Hofesh Shechter (since 2021), and Barak Marshall (from the 2024/25 season). Even during the pandemic, the company did not stop, launching an inspiring initiative that drew wide attention beyond the dance world: between winter and spring 2021, 16 choreographers, 16 filmmakers, and 16 composers each created a solo for one of the company’s members. The Dying Swans Project is still available free of charge on the media library of the German broadcaster 3sat. The project was enthusiastically received, even catching the attention of the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who arranged a video call with Eric Gauthier to learn more.

Recent highlights include the themed evening Swan Lakes (2021), with world premieres by Marie Chouinard, Marco Goecke, Hofesh Shechter, and Cayetano Soto; The Seven Sins (2022), in which Aszure Barton, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Sharon Eyal, Marco Goecke, Marcos Morau, Hofesh Shechter, and Sasha Waltz each transformed a deadly sin into a choreographic creation; the 2022/23 season’s 15th-anniversary celebration 15 YEARS ALIVE; and in 2024, ELEMENTS, featuring world premieres by Mauro Bigonzetti, Sharon Eyal, Andonis Foniadakis, and Louise Lecavalier.

The 2024/25 season brought two spectacular new productions: FireWorks, in which Mauro Bigonzetti, Virginie Brunelle, Stijn Celis, Dominique Dumais, Andonis Foniadakis, Marco Goecke, Johan Inger, Barak Marshall, Benjamin Millepied, and Sofia Nappi each created a short new work to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Theaterhaus as a cultural landmark for Stuttgart; and in summer 2025, the company opened the COLOURS International Dance Festival with the world premiere of The Turning of Bones, created by international choreography star Akram Khan.

Beyond its “traditional” performance activities, Gauthier Dance has stood out since its founding for its pioneering socio-cultural initiatives. With Gauthier Dance Mobile, the company brings dance to those unable to attend the theatre, performing in nursing homes, hospitals, and facilities for people with disabilities. In 2022, Theaterhaus and Eric Gauthier launched a new chapter of this program with the MOVES FOR FUTURE initiative, involving the new youth company. The Gauthier Dance JUNIORS // Theaterhaus Stuttgart ignite enthusiasm for dance among younger generations through numerous school performances across the region, showing remarkable maturity in their own independent productions, which rival those of their more experienced colleagues.

www.theaterhaus.com/de/gauthier

Il Centro Coreografico Nazionale Aterballetto è al Teatro Politeama Greco di Lecce con la serata Dreamers il 2 maggio 2026.

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