Europe’s dance capital in Riom

18 June 2024

Riom (canton of Graubünden) turns into Europe’s dance capital in summer. Nowhere else on the continent will there be so many ballet performances in a single month.

Riom’s two iconic stages (the castle and the Clavadeira) will host dancers who will stage eight full-length contemporary world premieres.

The initial impetus for Riom’s expanded dance programme was Fundaziun Origen’s constant search for the origins of performing arts. Ritual dance leads back to the early days. A second motivation was landscape theatre: dance lends itself to outdoor performances like no other stage genre.

Finally, there was a third reason for dance: the old routes to Europe’s metropolises, used by the pastry chefs, are coming back to life. The Pass landscape is not a place of hermits, but a melting pot of cultures for many centuries.

The Surses has always been multicultural and the region still is. For example, three languages and several dialects are spoken in the valley and it was and it has always been an important traffic and trade route in central Europe.

The programme between mid-July and mid-August offers two performances a day from Thursday to Sunday, one in the late afternoon at the Riom castle, the other in the evening at the Clavadeira.

The dance programme is framed by lectures by choreographers. These events take place at the Clavadeira.

(Source and further information: Fundaziun Origen)