Residency of Diane Portelli & Moveo Dance hosted by Dance Festival Malta in partnership with Diane Portelli & Moveo Dance, Abril en Danza and Na knap. Festival of Short Dance Form.
The residency of Diane Portelli & Moveo Dance focused on exploring the core concepts of Ashes2Ashes: our connection to the earth, our shared human origins, instinct, survival and transformation.
A key methodological approach involved suspending internal judgement, drawing on Timothy Gallwey's Inner Game theory. Through guided improvisation, impulse-led tasks, theatre exercises and somatic awareness practices, we sought to externalise "Self 2" (the instinctive, embodied self) while quietening the analytical "Self 1".
We explored structured improvisations centred on acting before thinking, reducing decision latency, and sustaining physical surrender to gravity. Alongside this, I introduced a movement vocabulary developed through research into primitive human behaviour, examining groundedness, hunting patterns, communal survival dynamics, and a deeper physical relationship with the soil and surrounding terrain. These impulses were subsequently expanded, deconstructed and reconfigured into choreographic material.
The first Ashes2Ashes residency took place in Ljubljana in collaboration with EnKnap from 15–19 February, culminating in an informal sharing and Q&A on 20 February at Španski Borci.
The five-day choreographic residency brought together ten participating artists from Italy, Romania and Slovenia, alongside the dancers of Moveo Dance Company. Each day was divided into two phases: four hours of laboratory work with the guest artists in the morning, followed by three hours of compositional development with the Moveo dancers in the afternoon.
The afternoon sessions with the Moveo dancers refined and structured the discoveries made during the morning laboratories, gradually shaping the material into a cohesive fourteen-minute choreographic section. This work was presented in an informal sharing on EnKnap's stage, followed by a Q&A with the audience, creating an opportunity for dialogue around the creative process, methodology and thematic concerns.
The residency successfully established a strong physical and conceptual foundation for Ashes2Ashes, generating a substantial movement vocabulary and affirming the project's central enquiry: that beneath our differences, we are all grounded in the same earth, and that through impulse and embodied connection we can access a more honest and authentic physical language.