Coalescing Towards
Presented by STRUT Dance in association with Tura and Perth Festival in 2024
STRUT Dance presented Italian artist Michele Rizzo’s bespoke offering Coalescing Towards for the PERTH MOVES hub, in association with Tura and Perth Festival.
The choreography combined contemplation with a gradual intensification of energy and cohesion. The performance explored two key concepts—repetition and unison—to delve into the essence of movement as a medium for forging togetherness. It was rooted in Michele’s choreographic pieces from his series HIGHER xtn., Reaching, and Rest, which drew inspiration from communal dancing.
Coalescing Towards was created in collaboration with local and international dance artists from the Perth MOVES Laboratory and featured an original composition by Australian sound artist Ozlem Kesik, commissioned by Tura.
Michele Rizzo | Director and Choreographer
Michele Rizzo is an Italian artist who has lived between Amsterdam and Milan since 2007. His practice bridges choreography and visual art, often exploring the intersection of club culture and contemporary art.
His early trilogy, beginning with Higher (2015), investigated club aesthetics and later expanded into immersive spatial environments with Spacewalk (2017). In Deposition (2019), Rizzo examined perception, framing seeing as an act that validates both performer and spectator.
In 2016, he extended his practice into the visual arts through a collaboration with Amsterdam’s If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution. His work HIGHER xtn. (2018) entered the Stedelijk Museum collection and toured widely across Europe. He continued this trajectory with Rest (2020), a hybrid of choreography, sculpture, and music, presented at the Quadriennale di Roma and later acquired by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo.
Rizzo has also collaborated with fashion brands including MARNI, Magliano, and Off-White. In 2021, his performance Reaching premiered at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, in collaboration with the Julia Stoschek Collection. That same year, he made his video debut with Rest (2021), developed from his earlier installation for the Quadriennale di Roma; the work was acquired by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Alongside his artistic practice, Rizzo is a lecturer at several institutions, including the SNDO School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam, contributing to contemporary discourse across performance and visual art.
Ozlem Kesik | Sound Artist
Plyanci is the alias of Boorloo based electronic artist Ozlem Kesik. Kesik’s idiosyncratic practice explores the endearing aesthetics of failure. Incorporating humor and meta irony, Kesik’s work embraces maximal rhythms and electronic glitches as a reflection of our own human fallibility, emotionality, and fragility.
Their work draws inspiration from Hyperpop, Techno, Drum & Bass as well as the visual art aesthetics of weirdcore.
