From 4 to 13 July 2025, the 55th edition of the Santarcangelo Festival will take place in Santarcangelo di Romagna (Rimini), Italy, under the slogan “not yet”. The oldest Italian performing arts festival, in its 55th edition, presents a unique programme entitled Focus on Poland, featuring leading artists of the young generation from Poland. The programme is partnered by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, an institution that has consistently supported the promotion of Polish culture on the international stage for many years. For over half a century, the Santarcangelo Festival has been setting the direction for the development of theatre and dance in Europe, inviting artists and audiences from all over the world to engage in dialogue. It is a place for bold experiments, the exchange of ideas and reflection on the role of art in the contemporary world. This year, for the fourth time, the artistic director is Tomasz Kireńczuk, a Polish playwright, critic and curator.
Polish performances in Italy in July 2025
This year’s edition, as part of Polish Focus, will feature performances by some of the most interesting Polish artists and creators of the Polish performing arts scene: Hana Umeda, Ewa Dziarnowska, Wojciech Grudziński, Alex Baczyński-Jenkins and the KEM collective. This is an invitation to take a closer look at the richness and complexity of Polish art – its involvement, sensitivity and diverse forms of expression.
“Supporting these artists is an expression of our commitment to promoting a bold, diverse and thought-provoking contemporary culture. Each of these activities makes an important contribution to the artistic discourse, both in Poland and on the international stage”, says Olga Brzezińska, Deputy Director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, which is supporting the presentation of Polish artists at the Italian festival for the third time. “In today’s world, art is becoming a universal language – it builds bridges of understanding, develops empathy and invites people to create together across borders. For the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, cooperation with the Santarcangelo Festival is not only a strategic partnership, but also a lively dialogue with artists, audiences and the very idea of art that has been going on for three years now. It is a place that boldly explores new forms, supports creative risk-taking and cultivates openness – values that are particularly close to our hearts”, she adds.
The slogan for the 2025 edition – “not yet” – raises the question of a space of suspension, a moment of respite in a reality full of tension and uncertainty. It is from this perspective that the performances of Polish artists who tackle the themes of physicality, trauma, memory, queerness and community resonate – always with sensitivity, courage and a fresh language of stage expression.
“Contemporary political and social systems are built around a feeling of fear that justifies control, segregation and exclusion, creates social boundaries and defines identities. In this context, uncertainty is no longer the exception but the rule – a position that determines our experience of reality. The present is therefore not a neutral and temporary state, but a battlefield where narratives are shaped and possible subjectivities are recognised. As Chantal Mouffe suggests, uncertainty, rather than being a threat, can become a space for confrontation between different visions of social organisation. Uncertainty is at the heart of the 55th edition of the Santarcangelo Festival: “not yet” – a transitional moment, a suspended attitude in which the future has not yet been determined and the past remains alive in disputes over its interpretation”, says Tomasz Kireńczuk, Artistic Director of the Festival (you can read an interview with Tomasz Kireńczuk on Culture.pl).
The focus of this year’s programme is the body – as a space of resistance, a source of expression and a battlefield for freedom, identity and subjectivity. Themes of racism, colonialism and decolonisation intertwine with work on personal and collective memory and attempts to create alternative narratives for forgotten histories. The festival also addresses the issue of control and violence against female and queer bodies, treating art as a form of resistance and emancipation. A special place is given to practices of care, understood as political and artistic gestures, as well as feminist and queer actions. The programme supports young and experimental art and contact with the audience, without forgetting about working with local youth.
Focus on Poland programme at the Santarcangelo Festival 2025
The Focus on Poland programme at the Santarcangelo Festival 2025 includes the following performances:
- Hana Umeda – RAPEFLOWER
The performance combines dance with a powerful narrative about personal and social experiences of physical violence. Hana Umeda explores the themes of trauma and rebirth, using unique forms of classical Japanese jiutamai dance and modern choreographic techniques. She conducts an investigation on her own body, trying to situate the experience of violence intertwined with defence and survival strategies. Like Artemisia Gentileschi, who transformed trauma into painting, Umeda exposes her violated body on stage, seeking a space of liberation through dance.
More information: RAPEFLOWER | Santarcangelo Festival
- Ewa Dziarnowska – This resting, patience
The performance This resting, patience departs from the traditional perception of dance as an isolated spectacle, focusing instead on its inherent social dimension. On the one hand, it is an ethereal archive of unfulfilled sensuality, a kinetic installation of fading movement; on the other, it is a physical striptease that touches on themes of attraction, voluntary objectification, intimacy and the aesthetics of nudity. In its devotion to the body, This resting, patience treats sensuality and dance as timeless, democratically accessible tools for disarming reality and designing a present that lasts – sensitive, loving, attentive.
More information: This resting, patience | Santarcangelo Festival
- Wojciech Grudziński – Threesome/Trzy
In his work, Grudziński evokes three legends of Polish dance: Stanisław Szymański, Wojciech Wiesiołowski and Gerard Wilk. The dancers, who were subjected to a regime of body and gender during their lifetime, regain their agency through Wojciech Grudziński’s choreographic queer archive. Threesome/Trzy seeks to debunk myths and rediscover the individual experiences of these artists in a world they were not part of. It is a hazy, posthumous ballet, a repressed legacy, a reconstruction, an act of somatic appropriation and transformation.
More information: THREESOME | Santarcangelo Festival
- Alex Baczyński-Jenkins – Malign Junction (Goodbye, Berlin)
In Malign Junction, the artist draws on a moment in recent history that is important to the queer counterculture he represents – the last days of Berlin’s nightlife and the rise of fascism in the early 1930s – to embody the tension between ecstasy and violence, freedom and finitude. The choreography is devoted to the theme of the end and focuses on imprisonment, broken promises, loss and movement in relation to power – at a moment of historical upheaval. The theatre stage is simultaneously a stage, a strange apparatus of imprisonment, an internal landscape of fragmentation, a club, a waiting room. There are silent actors, a broken heart, a desire for resistance, mourning, despair and imprisonment.
More information: Malign Junction (Goodbye, Berlin) | Santarcangelo Festival
- Kem – Dragana Bar
Dragana Bar is a queer club night combining a club space with an art gallery, exploring the political dimension of dance and community on the dance floor. The project was created by Kem – a queer feminist collective from Warsaw exploring the intersections of choreography, sound and performance with social practices. The first edition of Dragana Bar took place during the collective’s residency at the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, when an alternative entrance to the building was proposed – through a window. This way, Kem created an autonomous zone of expression and a safer space for queer and female pleasure. The entrance to each Dragana Bar is marked with a pink triangle in a green circle – a symbol of safe space that refers to the history of resistance to queerphobia and the appropriation of the pink triangle by the ACT-UP movement, transforming it from a stigma into a symbol of struggle and self-determination.
More information: Dragana Bar | Santarcangelo Festival
The full programme of the 55th edition of the Santarcangelo Festival is available at www.santarcangelofestival.com.