Sugar. Stone. Sea.
To the sugar in your tea.
To every crack in the stone.
To the sea, the sea.
The Italian Cultural Institute of Valletta is particularly proud to sponsor Sugar. Stone. Sea., a multidisciplinary performance developed by ARDA Collective during a residency produced by Dance Beyond Borders.
ARDA was born in Italy through the Polimorfa Festival hosted by the Biloura Intercultural Arts Collective. It is made up of nine artists from Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Serbia and Malta. Their work weaves performance, movement, and activism to invite audiences into shared acts of resistance and imagination.
Since their formation in 2023, ARDA has:
- Presented their work at three editions of the Polimorfa Festival in Val di Chy, Italy, hosted by the Biloura Intercultural Arts Collective
- Engaged in artistic research in Malta and Turin
- Presented their work at A Casa Vella in Galicia
Their first collective production, Decoloniality: The Story of Us All, is an intercultural collaboration shaped through a three-week residency, community gatherings, and a final performance that weaves history, migration, and decolonial thought.
Inspired by the concept of a tea party, the work explores how colonial histories persist in contemporary Europe – through everyday rituals, migration, and collective memory. It reframes the tea party as a site of encounter: between sweetness and exploitation, belonging and exclusion.
Building on these explorations, Sugar. Stone. Sea. uses movement, sound, and visual imagery to invite audiences to taste – and unlearn – the ways empire continues to linger in our gestures, our affections, and our sense of home.
It leaves us with a shared question: what’s left of me if I decolonise myself?
DATES AND TIME
Saturday, 6th December at 8pm
ARDA is composed by Chiara Bosco (Italy), Elena Brea (Spain), Deborah Falzon (Malta), Claudia Sanchez (Spain), Bojan Milosavljevic (Serbia), Kjersti Nilsen (Belgium), Silvia Ribero (Italy), Angie Rottensteiner (Austria) and Julienne Schembri (Malta).
This production forms part of the larger project: Decoloniality: The Story of Us All, a project by the ARDA Collective, produced by Dance Beyond Border, supported by Arts Council Malta and Spazju Kreattiv, with additional support from Acción Cultural Española, Istituto Italiano di Cultura di La Valletta and the patronage of the Embassy of Belgium.