Everything flowed like a small mountain river. A European research project on dance and school innovation

How can choreographic language be valuable for the school system in the contemporary world? This paper intends to discuss frameworks, process aspects and outcomes of the European project Media Dance Plus, developed between Italy and France, and addressed to students and teachers of two secondary schools. Born from the scientific collaboration between the Department of Human Sciences for Education “R. Massa” (University of Milano-Bicocca) and the Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo, the project aimed at experimenting and promoting, through choreographic artist residencies, reflections and innovative practices in the encounter between the world of school and performative languages. Focus of the project was the enhancement, in school contexts, of the embodied dimension and the performing arts as languages aimed at promoting the development of creative potential and a performative, expressive and embodied relationship with knowledge (Leonard, 2012; Gamelli and Mirabelli, 2019; Antonacci and Schiavone, 2021; Ferri, 2022). Two choreographers specialized in processes of didactic innovation through dance have worked with teachers and students. Teachers were specifically involved in a training sensitive to the mind-body relationship in learning-teaching process. At the same time, an immersive choreographic training was addressed to students, through participative and engaging methodologies. Starting from a literature review on the role of artistic residencies in school contexts, the reading and data analysis were based on the theoretical framework of the Una scuola Manifesto (Antonacci and Guerra, 2018) and highlighted the impact that the performing arts can have on the school system, in terms of didactic innovation (Lee, 2013; Ruppin, 2015; Filiod, 2018). For this purpose, the contribution intends to share the multiple voices and multiple views of the actors involved, highlighting how the encounter with performance languages triggers the embodied approach to the transformative potential of the aesthetic dimension, understood as an experience of connection and mutual recognition.