CAMP-IN and RESEARCH CAMPING: two worlds together
This year Lavanderia a Vapore explores the dimension of camping from different angles, creating two distinct and complementary projects.
CAMP-IN is a new training project, which will take place from 13 November to 20 November, dedicated to emerging dance makers: a group that, supported by mentors, will stay in the Lavanderia, inhabiting their own studio fragments. A reflective and intimate dimension in which to experiment a horizontal pedagogy. The group will then join the extended artistic community that arrives as a multitude with the Camping from the 21st to the 23rd of November. A public opening of the creative processes of the CAMP-IN dance makers is planned on the first day of RESEARCH CAMPING, the 21st of November. The project is realised with the support of the MiC and SIAE, as part of the “PER CHI CREA” programme.
With RESEARCH CAMPING, from the 21st to the 23rd of November, appropriateness and reflection are set in motion, as the gerund verb suggests, opening to a broad artistic community and the public with the customary appointment dedicated to the public dimension of research. In dialogue with Workspace Ricerca X, Research Camping develops in complementarity with the shared residencies, of which it embodies one of the public extensions.
RESEARCH CAMPING is realised with the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo Foundation.
Open call CAMP-IN 2025
Professional trans-formation project
A collective residency for practice-based training and research
For Italian dancers under 35
13–23 November 2025 //Lavanderia a Vapore
It was nice not having to present a finished project, but asking questions and asking others questions.
Research that is not tied to specific objectives is freer to circulate and self-determine, and truly resembles what it wants to be.
Quote from an anonymous CAMP-IN 2027 participant
The mentors reason and ally themselves with me, the participant, and we don’t get lost in rhetorical and academic presentations. We dig together, we’re all covered in mud.
I can’t wait to see how the Lavanderia setting will change! If we enter a place that resembles what we don’t expect, we can tune in with our antennas.
Quote from anonymous participant, CAMP-IN 2028
WHAT IS CAMP-IN?
A picaresque gathering of bodies, a space-time turbine that sows skills.
Camp-in is a professional training project that involves a 10-day collective residency, from 13 to 23 November 2025, dedicated to six emerging Italian dancers under the age of 35 at the Lavanderia a Vapore, a dance residency centre in Collegno.
In Camp-in, the group of participants is supported by six mentors and other guest figures, forming a small temporary research community that invades and transforms the Lavanderia in all its spaces, at all hours of the day, like a real campus dedicated to artistic experimentation. A plural and porous space where there are no classes and no compulsory paths, but modular possibilities to draw on according to one’s own perspective.
The prefix “in” alludes to the parasitic nature of the project, a camping out in the Residency Centre with a whirlwind of energy and questions, a lingering in space, but it also refers to pausing and immersing oneself in the research material that each participant brings and adopts as a field of investigation.
METHOD: RESEARCH AS A FIELD OF TRAINING
Not project work, but the free circulation of ideas without a predefined outcome
Each participant will be able to bring with them a fragment of work in progress, which will become a shared field of comparison, exchange and vision with the other selected artists, and which will mature until it is shared publicly on the final platform.
We believe in research as a privileged field of training, an unknown territory where it is possible to experiment with methods free from the pre-established form of the outcome, an area where ideas can be tested through experience and knowledge can be gained from trial and error, embodied knowledge that consolidates visions and skills.
The training process starts from form to give substance to new sensory knowledge.
MENTOR
From the teaching desk to the bonfire, getting our hands dirty together
The project is based on a practice-based and horizontal pedagogy according to which the role of the mentor is to transmit their skills and poetics with maieutic aims, aimed at stimulating participants’ ability to find individual and innovative solutions to their artistic questions. The aim is therefore not to enhance technical and executive skills, but rather critical-imaginative and compositional skills, starting from one’s own style and material, thanks to the stimuli offered by the activities. We proceed together through questions, on the edge of mystery, with the uncertainty of fireflies that together take back the night.
The mentors involved are Camilla Guarino, Cristina Kristal Rizzo, Elisabetta Consonni, Enrico Malatesta, Giuseppe Comuniello and Salvo Lombardo.
THE DAYS: CHANGING FORM AND CHANGING SKIN
From 13 to 20 November, the daily work will be divided into morning group sessions led by the mentors, individual afternoon sessions in assigned study rooms, moments of sharing among participants, and guided spaces for reflection and documentation.
We will talk about the transmission and radical appropriation of code, the creation of plural and decolonial archives, the exploration of bodies beyond the ableist paradigm, spatialisation and sound dramaturgy, critical and site-specific readings of creative contexts, and reflection on curating as a performative practice in public space.
From 21 to 23 November, Camp-in intersects with the fourth edition of Research Camping 2025, a public platform for sharing artistic research, curated together with Workspace Ricerca X.
From a space for reflection, Camp-in becomes action, a dynamic gerund opening up to moments of encounter.
During these days, the fragments of research implemented during the course of the work and the documentation maps developed by the Camp-in artists will be shared with the public within a scenographic, habitable landscape. They will enter into dialogue with a vast artistic community and with a public dimension, in an extraordinary space that makes possible new forms and new postures, new geographies of the sensible. Not a showcase, but an opportunity for exchange, comparison and mutual feedback with gazes and bodies invited to immerse themselves together in the experimental dimension of Research Camping.
WHO IS IT FOR?
We invite Italian dancers or dancers residing in Italy under the age of 35 who have completed basic technical training and are interested in developing their own style and deepening their compositional skills, with a particular focus on aesthetics that challenge traditional forms of enjoyment.
WHAT WE OFFER
A training programme facilitated by a group of mentors offering diverse experiences and poetics, experimentation with open and practice-based methodologies, individual research tools and spaces, guided group feedback sessions, a safety net for any failures, and the opportunity to benefit from the exchange network that will be generated during the Camp-in and Research Camping days.
Participants will also receive a financial contribution of €1,000. Applicants must have an individual VAT number or be able to rely on associations or organisations that can issue invoices.
The selected artists are invited to participate in all days of the Camping.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Submit a research proposal and a fragment of work in progress, to be used as a playground for the training process. The evaluation will be carried out by the Lavanderia a Vapore working group and mentors, taking into account motivations and principles of fairness, with a focus on creating a diverse and complementary group.
To submit your proposal, fill out the form no later than 15 September 2025.
The results will be communicated by email and published on the website www.lavanderiaavapore.eu by 15 October 2025.
CONTACTS
For information and questions, please contact info@lavanderiaavapore.eu (active until 31 July and from 1 September to 10 September 2025).
