The winner of the Prospettiva Danza Teatro International 2025 Award is Pablo Ezequiel Rizzo
The winner of the Prospettiva Danza Teatro 2025 16th Edition Prize is the choreographic project SEX.EXE by Pablo Ezequiel Rizzo. Heartfelt congratulations to all participants and especially to the other four finalists selected by the committee!
In the Sala Ridotto of the Giuseppe Verdi Theater in Padua on Sunday, May 11, the winner of the PREMIO INTERNAZIONALE PROSPETTIVA DANZA TEATRO 2025, promoted by the Culture Department of the City of Padua with the contribution of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Padova e Rovigo in collaboration with the Circuito Multidisciplinare Regionale Arteven and the artistic direction of Laura Pulin and Eleonora de Logu, was proclaimed. These are the four finalist choreographers who presented their works in the presence of the jury and the audience: Pierandrea Rosato (IT) with the choreographic project Shining bruises – a study on burnout, Glenda Gheller (IT) with the choreographic project Love Parade, Alessio Damiani (IT) with the choreographic project Burdens of Being, Pablo Ezequiel Rizzo (IT) with the choreographic project Sex.exe.
JURY EVALUATIONS
• Shining bruises – a study on burnout of Pierandrea Rosato: the committee appreciated the project and the dramaturgical work around the investigative theme of burnout. The dialogue with the second character on stage, a true alter ego, becomes a cue to develop the thematic discourse in choreographic terms on the one hand, and the more purely performative/theatrical discourse on the other. The visual set, deliberately redundant, confirms the assumptions of the title.
• Love Parade of Glenda Gheller: the committee appreciated Glenda Gheller’s transformation of love, an eternal and overused theme, into a powerful male duet, interpreted with sparkling vivacity, which becomes a free manifestation of one’s emotions over sweeping techno music, beginning with the imagery of Berlin mass parades of the 1990s and the poems of American poet and activist Bell Hooks.
• Burdens of Being of Alessio Damiani: the committee appreciated the great performative appeal of this male duet, the bearer of a pregnant investigation of research into choreographic language. Delivered by Damiani to two very young performers, the piece was, in the jury’s opinion, successful in revealing the interiority and dynamics of the double: trust, bonding with the other, inseparability that only in the end doubles, aware of its own weight.
• Sex.exe of Pablo Ezequiel Rizzo: the committee appreciated how the transformation of the three-dimensionality of the body into the two-dimensionality of the video, in the iconographic reference to bas-reliefs and sculptures of antiquity, introduces a displacement of vision that distorts the perception of identity and hints at an interesting development of the play. The excerpt in fieri presented also demonstrates for the jury singular ability to synthesize movement, dramaturgy, digital technologies and original sound.
Considering these judgments, the victory of the 16th edition of the INTERNATIONAL PROSPECTIVE DANCE THEATER PRIZE – worth 5,000 euros, which guarantees a week of choreographic residency in Padua, a performance during the Festival Prospettiva Danza Teatro 2026 as a premiere for the Veneto region, and a week of choreographic residency at Scenario Pubblio in Catania – a Center of Relevant National Interest for Dance – is awarded to Pablo Ezequiel Rizzo’s Sex.exe. The committee also awards an invitation to the Cannes Festival de danse 2025 for an evening dedicated to the International Prize Prospective Dance Theater to Burdens of Being by Alessio Damiani. The Audience Award is given to Burdens of Being by Alessio Damiani.
The commission consisted of Maria Luisa Buzzi, editor-in-chief of Danza&Danza magazine; Philippe Kratz, freelance choreographer and artistic director of NBDT – Nuovo Balletto di Toscana (Florence); Carlo Mangolini, head of Artistic Development of Teatro Stabile del Veneto – Teatro Nazionale; Antonella Bertoni, dancer and choreographer, co-artistic director of Compagnia Abbondanza/Bertoni; Eleonora de Logu, co-artistic director of Festival Prospettiva Danza Teatro and performer; Benedetta Bruzzese, programming and coordination of Arteven Circuito Multidisciplinare Regionale special projects; Laura Pulin, artistic director of Festival Prospettiva Danza Teatro; Michele Di Stefano, artistic director of Buffalo – Teatro di Roma; Didier Deschamps, artistic director of Festival de danse di Cannes; Emanuele Masi, artistic director of Festival Equilibrio.