Scuola Piccola Zattere hosts a conversation emerging from the ongoing collaboration with Aliaskar Abarkas, from his residency and commission included in the current exhibition R.S.V.P. Résonnez, S’il Vous Plaît. The talk unfolds around the interweaving of educational formats, choreographic practices, and artistic research, tracing how embodied knowledge and collective processes generate new modes of learning, transmission, and experimentation.

Aliaskar Abarkas is an Iranian artist based in London, where he is currently a fellow at Rose Choreographic School. Working across compositional, choreographic, and sculptural forms, Abarkas engages practices that foreground participation in pedagogical processes and multiplicity of voices.

Aliaskar will be joined in an open reflection on pedagogical and choreographic experimentation as forms of situated research by Martin Hargreaves, Director of Rose Choreographic School, and Silvia Bottiroli, Artistic Director of Kunstenfestivaldesarts. Silvia Bottiroli is a curator, writer, and researcher working at the intersection of performativity, institutional practice, and critical enquiry. Her research explores choreographic thinking, rhythm, and mapping as curatorial and pedagogical tools. She is also a fellow at Rose Choreographic School.

Martin Hargreaves is a dramaturg and writer, whose research connects around performance and performativity and includes the recent histories of contemporary dance, queering practices and camp misunderstandings. Before taking up the Head of School role, he was the Editor of Dance Theatre Journal and Programme Leader of the MA Body in Performance at Laban, and the Director of Research and Postgraduate Courses at London Contemporary Dance School.

Rose Choreographic School is an experimental research and pedagogical platform dedicated to rethinking choreography as an expanded, postdisciplinary field. Hosted by Sadler’s Wells, the School supports a cohort of 13 researchers over a two-year cycle, to collectively imagine what a school can be. With no fixed curriculum or predetermined outcome, the School functions as a community of artist-researchers who shape their own conditions for speculation, articulation, and shared learning.