Date: 12/09/2006
Place:

Alessandra Copola’s home town Bologna could not offer her the practical support nor the spiritual climate to make art, so she moved first to Paris, then to Brussels. Paris was a disillusion; the Parisian dance scene was very closed, snobbish and poor in terms of exchange between people. She feels much more at home in Brussels, where the open and tolerant atmosphere of the dance community strongly contrasts with the competitive atmosphere in Paris. She feels she is part of a community that is characterized by mutual interest and respect and by people sharing a similar view on art and life in general. To Copola, sharing her projects and interests with others causes a sense of belonging. Making art to her means searching for a personal expression of the self, which clashes with the general opinion that this quest has to have a material outcome in the form of a production. Dancing for the sake of itself is often not accepted. The Brussels dance community is based on a set of characteristics that its members have in common, viz the place where they live, the performances they see, the problems they have, their way of living and the language they speak (to be understood as a kind of universal dance language). It is a fluid entity that people can enter and leave very easily.

Alessandra Copola experiences very strongly the influence of environment on her life. Being born in a town like Bologna was not exactly stimulating for her dance career. She has to pave her own path, which is not always easy. Right now her dance projects do not produce income. On the contrary, they cost her money, so she has to make a sacrifice and work in a restaurant to have an income. Although she is working in a popular meeting point of the Brussels dance community, it is precisely working there that pulls her out of the community because she is there in the position of a waitress and not in the position of a dancer. The two roles do not go well together in more than one respect. Communication with her colleagues about her dance projects is not possible because they have completely different values. Working in a restaurant also requires another rhythm than working as a dancer. It is hard to combine with workshops in the morning for example. A lot of people who arrived in Brussels the same time as she did moved away because they couldn’t make their living out of dance. As for herself, she has two priorities at the moment: first, she wants to define her field of action more clearly and find an ‘artistic family’ of people who share the same ideas. Second, she wants to make a living out of her artistic work. She expects to have a sense of freedom once those objectives are achieved.

Art cinema – exchange – improvisation circle - openness – unicity – solo – productive connections – no expectations – curiosity – dancing for the sake of it - uncertainty – Italian wave - no compassion – constantly in contact – Ardennes – feed her relationships - another rhythm – materialistic – sharing desires - artistic family – big compromise – “ugly duckling” – work for someone else – writing dossiers - “climbing” – take a risk – plane ticket to Vietnam - compromises – soundtrack - fluid

Where she goes to get away= Ardennes
Her most expensive purchase in the last year = plane ticket to Vietnam