Nowhere Like Here, a new international dance production developed within the Beyond Front@: Bridging Periphery project, will premiere in September at the HERE:2025 International Performing Arts Festival. Choreographed by Francesco Scavetta, the performance features six dancers from the project’s partner countries. They were selected through a series of auditions held in autumn 2024 in Poland, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, and Slovenia.

Nowhere Like Here deals with our emotional responses to the connotation of “home” as a metaphor for identity, of domestic bliss, a place of warmth, comfort and affection, but also conflicts and routines. The place where to welcome and where to close the door and be by ourselves. Where we feel safe and where dishes can pile up. The utopian emotional location we recollect with nostalgia: it’s not a case that when talking about home, we often regress to childhood and refer to the place we grew up.

The performance unfolds a visual and metaphorical blueprint of the “home”, as a microcosm of the world, where thresholds are continually drawn and boundaries repeatedly broken. The dancers on stage rediscover daily rituals, embodying a physical cartography that keeps transforming in front of our eyes: the gesture of welcoming becomes an iconic forgotten language, connecting and rejecting at the same time, in a short circuit of contradictions. The image of the house becomes the topography of our intimate being: people need houses in order to dream, in order to imagine. A politic of the gaze, contra posed to the impression of the glance: epiphanic and restless.

Additional References

The photo book Pictures from Home by photographer Larry Sultan has been a central source of inspiration. Pictures from Home is a selection of photographs of Sultan’s parents, which together form a kind of family album spanning from 1982 to 1992. The camera functions as the family’s primary tool of self-representation — a way to, at least seemingly, preserve memory. The images also contribute to shaping the concept of “family” and its cultural myth, serving as a testament to a shared longing for the narrative of domestic peace and family happiness.

But the images only give the illusion of being a simple depiction of reality. The staging in the photographs instead serves as a framing of a daydream — of how things ought to be. Everything is constructed in the images, yet appears ordinary and comforting.

Francesco Scavetta (IT/SE)

Francesco Scavetta has established himself internationally through his innovative work, playful humor, and sharp, subversive intelligence. His dance company, Wee/Francesco Scavetta, is a leading figure on the Nordic dance scene. Wee was founded in 1999 in Oslo together with Gry Kipperberg and has since produced 24 full-length performances and toured in 37 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas.

Scavetta’s work has evolved in both format and aesthetics, but consistently explores what theater and performance can mean in today’s world and what kinds of dialogue they can open with the audience. His theatricality is often described as the atmosphere of a strange dream or a playful childlike world — peculiar, humorous, poetic, and simultaneously surprising. At the core of his explorations are vulnerability and paradox, revelation and dream, empathy and astonishment. He deliberately avoids narrative and physical clichés, instead questioning reality and identity with humorous skepticism. Scavetta creates performances that engage and surprise, evoke empathy, twist expectations, and blend poetry with the unexpected.

His work has been awarded several honors, including the Cultural Prize from Tanum Municipality (Sweden, 2018), “Artist of the Year” by Lokstallet Art Hall and Strömstad Municipality (Sweden, 2016), and “Best Performance of the Year” in 2014 for the Croatian version of Surprised Body Project. In 2003, his solo performance Live was commissioned by the Venice Biennale and won first prize at the IMEB International Electroacoustic Music Festival in Bourges, France, for its integration of dance, music, and video.

In addition to his artistic work, Scavetta has extensive experience as a teacher. Since 2005, his teaching project A Surprised Body has been invited to 47 countries across North, Central, and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. He has led workshops and masterclasses at numerous prestigious institutions and festivals, including IMPULSTANZ (Vienna), P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels), SEAD (Salzburg), Tanzquartier Wien, Greenwich Dance (London), K3 Hamburg, and Hot Summer Kyoto International Workshop Festival (Japan).

 

Credits

Concept, choreography: Francesco Scavetta

Created in collaboration with the dancers: Margareta Firinger, Magalí Camps, George-Alexandru Pleșca, Jerneja Fekonja, Michał Przybyła, Laura Tóth, Thomas Vantuycom

Music: Kim Myhr

Sound technician: Matteo Dell’Unto

Dramaturge: Guy Cools

Scenography: Francesco Scavetta, Luciano Goizueta

Light design: Stefano Stacchini

Costume design: Mari Ballangrud

Photos: Naomi Pongolini

 

Date and Venue

Location: Vitlycke – Centre for Performing Arts, Sweden.

Dates: Friday, 12 September 19.00 and Saturday, 13 September 19.00.

For more information, please see the festival’s website.

 

 

The performance Nowhere Like Here, choreographed by Francesco Scavetta, is being created as part of the Beyond Front@ Bridging Periphery project.