Sentimental1 is Cristina Kristal Rizzo‘s new choreographic project, a solo performed by the choreographer herself. This new research focuses on the performer’s presence and her chameleon-like ability to traverse emotional planes and practice absolute freedom of form, poetically recalibrating what reverberates at maximum intensity between feeling and the practice of one’s own exposure. Within this horizon lies the notion of the sentimental, understood not as emotional overload, but rather as a perceptive device that allows the body to accommodate affective oscillations and tensions without translating them into rhetoric. The sentimental thus becomes a form of calibrated openness, a regime of attention that makes micro-variables of human experience legible and, at the same time, brings out its political dimension.
A purple-black ecosystem hovers in the three regions of the deep sea, a thousand metres deep and beyond, where sunlight cannot reach. I perceive it as a sort of black beach: its movement, a rhythmic rhetoric, is never gratuitous, but weaves a circularity that attracts and envelops me. I immersed myself in this black magma to bring forth another dance: slow, narrative, traversed by a fertile density, brimming with possibilities and unexpected accumulations. In this space, excess and proliferation become a generative engine, a constant push towards transformation. Within this dark sea, I can do nothing but expose the body as a gesture of intimacy: languidly projected into space according to a logic close to dreaming, where incongruous elements coexist and influence each other. I invite the viewer to gradually enter this field of attention—to let themselves be looked at, to let themselves be seen, to let themselves be experienced—a space that is sentimental and dense, immense and abysmal, exposed and irremediably romantic.
– Cristina Kristal Rizzo
Cristina Kristal Rizzo is a dancer, performer, and choreographer based in Florence, active in the performing arts scene since the early 1990s. She is one of the founders of the historic Kinkaleri collective, with which she has collaborated extensively, engaging with the contemporary international choreographic scene and receiving numerous awards, including the Premio Ubu and the Premio Lo Straniero. Since 2008, she has pursued an independent path in choreographic production, directing her research toward a highly dynamic theoretical reflection, aimed at regenerating the very act of creation and raising questions about the present. Today, one of the leading figures in Italian choreography, her work is regularly presented at international events dedicated to contemporary dance, performance, and interdisciplinary research in the contemporary arts. In addition to touring, she maintains an intense program of continuing education, lecturing, workshops, and theoretical writing. As a guest choreographer, she has created works for major opera houses and institutions in Italy and abroad, including the Teatro Comunale di Firenze – Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Aterballetto, Balletto di Toscana Junior, LAC Lugano, MACRO Rome, MUSEION Bolzano, Museo Pecci Prato, Museo del Novecento Florence, and MASI Museo Lugano. She contributed to the special project The Platform of Balinese Dance for the Santarcangelo Festival 2014 and 2015 and to the 2021 edition of LiveArtsWeek with Xing. Since 2019, she has been actively involved in Sup de Sub, a project for young non-professionals from the suburbs of Marseille and Paris. In October 2021, she was a guest artist at the Juntarte / La Escena Inclusiva project in Havana, Cuba, and curated the Cuba>>Firenze 2032 project for the Fabbrica Europa Festival. In 2026 she is fellow residence artist at Scuola Piccole Zattere in Venice. Her work is supported and produced by Fuori Margine, the Dance and Performing Arts Production Centre of Sardinia, and she is an artist in residence at PARC/Fondazione Fabbrica Europa for the three-year period 2025-2027.
choreography, habitat, outfit Cristina Kristal Rizzo
light consultancy Giulia Pastore
sound mix Morenxxx
production Fuorimargine Centro di Produzione e Arti Performative della Sardegna
in collaboration with La Democrazia del Corpo CANGO
creative residency PARC Performing Arts Research Centre
ph. Anna Shvets