Declaration of intent

We are convinced that the theatre can and should go back to being that vital place in which the public is faced with the passions and ideas that permeate society, and that this will only be possible if it ceases to be simply a reassuring venue for social encounters.

It is in fact essential that its role should not be reduced to the chance to meet television personalities, nor to an empty ritual, nor that it should be governed simply by the logic of “numbers”, which is certainly no guarantee of the free propagation of ideas and works. We believe that the theatre will retrieve its significance only if it is able to free itself of the logic governing entertainment and profit.

Culture is a resource, not a commodity. The application of undiscerning business parameters to this sector adulterates its function and allows the logic of consensus to predominate over that of invention, promoting facile offers to the detriment of courageous innovation.
Contents, not genres, are the qualifying factors of the works. It is irrelevant whether a work uses movement, sound, words, technologies or whatever else; what counts is the earnestness of the thought that generated it and the consistent quality of its execution.
We are therefore of the opinion that it is urgent to remove all the barriers formed by norms and all the corporate defences put up after the war to safeguard opera and prose, barriers whose only function today is to guard areas of privilege to the detriment of the free, lively circulation of works and ideas.

The theatre is the best possible place for a dialectic relation between generations, cultures and different hopes, different positions and diverse forms of unease. The programmers’ choice of shows, therefore, is part and parcel of their direct knowledge and their exact relation with places. This is why we believe in the importance of founding programming on well-defined cultural projects where the consistency of the theatres’ choices enables audiences to recognise, and recognise themselves, in the places.
This shared conviction is the starting-point for the dance companies that receive the Tuscany Region’s contribution and that have set up the ADAC, an association which has four main aims:

• to work towards the construction and development of an organic system in dancing and in contemporary body languages, to be founded on the complementary nature and on the meaningful coordination of production, distribution, promotion and training;

• to work towards a closer and greater relationship in communication and exchange with the world of the other arts, and in particular with the world of Visual Arts;

• to work in favour of innovation in the entertainment system by overcoming the traditional subdivision into genres, including that regarding the nomination of directors;

• to work towards the urgent standardisation of entertainment resources.

Although the “ADAC” started out within the field of Tuscan dance companies, it is not, and does not intend to be, a regional association of the category, but is open to all theatres and organisations that share its aims and wish to operate effectively to achieve them, convinced of the need for an in-depth renewal of the entertainment system.
Only by going beyond the schematic and anachronistic approach separating the moment of creation from that of production and distribution through a new, shared relationship between companies, theatres, centres and circuits, will it be possible to build a living theatre system able to adapt itself step by step to society’s evolution. Only in this way will it be possible to bring together tradition and the contemporary scene, guaranteeing all forms of expression equal dignity and an equal opportunity to meet the public.