Writers' Reflections - Part 1
- festivalsmalta
- Jul 26
- 6 min read
Dance Festival Malta Writer's Critic Platform
Be the Storm – Moveo Dance Company
By Lara Zammit
Moveo Dance Company’s Be the Storm reflects on navigating life in one’s twenties, be it in relation to the dynamics of power, romantic entanglements or finding one’s place in the world.
It is no surprise that this choreography is set outdoors, in the urban wilderness. There is something animal about the dancers’ interactions. The choreography begins with a group clad in different coloured suits, androgynous yet distinctive. Their movements are slow and intentional. They climb on each other like the Brothers Grimm fable of Town Musicians of Bremen, becoming larger to scare away the dangers they face. They bang their chests together like angry goats in a fight for supremacy, an angry burst of agency.
Midway we witness a scene of rejection – a dancer is left standing, stranded, as his advance is unrequited. Like the dancers onstage, we are all struggling to connect. Aspects of the dancers’ interactions strike me as a nod to the perennial gender war, though it seems like it may be pointless amid the androgyny.
The music transitions from operatic and sombre to the young and dumb with LMFAO’s Sexy and I Know It, perhaps an intimation to this age of distraction that keeps us from truly finding ourselves.
Usurper – Thomas Noone
By Lara Zammit
The dancer sits bare-chested in a brown, pleated skirt, reminiscent of a Samurai. His face is meditative; he is lost to whispers and waves growing louder. Then his eyes grow wild and weary, his mouth agape. We see in this mirror a frail human being searching.
In an evocative, surreal search for self and identity, choreographer and dancer Thomas Noone explores in Usurper his many splintering selves – those many faces we wear per day. We each walk through life bearing many guises, but we rarely get to confront them.
Using a puppet designed by André Mello to resemble Noone, the two face each other as they shadow box and entangle across the stage. The scene is unnerving, uncanny. The puppet reminds me of Michelangelo’s depiction of himself on the Sistine Chapel ceiling as St Bartholomew’s flayed skin.
The puppet and master face each other, but we wonder which is which.
Surge – Tom Dale
By Lara Zammit
In a mixture of blinding lights and virtual cacophony, Tom Dale takes us onto what may very well be a purposely dreadful journey. As virtuality threatens the fabric of what we know to be real, as we succumb further and further to our social media doom-scrolls, Dale’s choreography creates a disorienting, uncomfortable experience.
The dancer sings as she strolls amid impressive lighting design, as though wading through stars and space in a futuristic sci-fi realm. Combined with the music, the patterns emerging on the theatre floor look like Chladni figures.
The choreography is a sensory overload, much akin to the virtual realm. Glitches and surges galore. I found myself shielding my eyes at times, finding it all a bit too much to bear. The dancer was at times nowhere to be seen amid the raging patterns, even if she was indeed right there.
Sadly this is not an unfamiliar feeling. We were not meant to be so saturated in virtuality – the neurosis of our time. This felt to me like the dance version of scrolling though TikTok.
Tradition in Motion: Min Kim’s Fan-made
By Regina Egle Liotta Catrambone
Min Kim’s Fan-made, performed by Jong Woo Kim at Dance Festival Malta, was a quiet, heartfelt meditation on identity, memory, and the weight of tradition. With only a straw mat, a single fan, and a stage awash in soft light, the performance unfolded with moving simplicity and poetic grace.
At its core, Fan-made explores a deeply human tension: how do we hold on to what shaped us, while making space for who we are becoming? As Min Kim shared, the piece reflects the difficulty of releasing rituals and values we no longer need—yet still feel connected to. This emotional complexity pulsed through every gesture Jong Woo Kim delivered with restraint, sensitivity, and quiet intensity.
The fan—historically a symbol of status and elegance in Korean culture—became in this context something much more intimate: a companion, a memory, a tether. The choreography invited the audience not to watch, but to feel—to share in the vulnerability of someone trying to reconcile the past with the present.
Fan-made didn’t demand attention; it offered connection. And in its closing stillness, one question lingered:
What do we carry forward, and why?
Be the Storm by Moveo Dance Company
By Regina Egle Liotta Catrambone
On a sweltering evening in the courtyard of the Valletta Campus, University of Malta, Moveo Dance Company opened Dance Festival Malta with a refreshing current of movement and meaning in Be the Storm, choreographed by Diane Portelli. The bold piece explored the fragility and force of emotional storms with power, elegance, and wit.
The dancers, dressed in vibrant monochrome, moved through fierce ensemble sections and quiet, introspective moments, reflecting a spectrum of vulnerability and resilience. The choreography flowed with intention, grounded yet unpredictable, capturing the turbulence and calm we all move through.
The performance balanced raw movement with moments of quiet detail. Carefully chosen music guided the emotional arc, from tension and sorrow to irony and joy, without ever overpowering the dance itself. The unexpected final twist, a playful, unrestrained ending, left the audience smiling, while reinforcing the work’s layered humanity.
Be the Storm didn’t just open the festival. It set the tone: fearless, inventive, and alive with feeling.
P O W E R by Sarah Vella
By Regina Egle Liotta Catrambone
Sarah Vella’s P O W E R, performed at Dance Festival Malta, is a deeply moving tribute to women’s resilience and shared strength. It opens in complete darkness, broken only by the sound of breath, fragile, human, alive. On the pitch-black stage, two dancers lie far apart, their stillness heavy with unspoken sorrow. From the very beginning, live music fills the space, not with harmony, but with a raw, scraping texture, like metal dragged across stone. The discomfort is deliberate. The air feels thick with pain, quiet, internal, and hauntingly familiar.
Their movements are at first disjointed, uncoordinated, as if lost in isolation. Each gesture trembles with hesitation, like bodies carrying invisible weight. Yet slowly, they begin to reach, toward something, perhaps toward each other. A delicate meeting of backs becomes a moment of grace. Hands, tender and searching, emerge as the thread that binds them. In that connection, something shifts. The music softens and expands. The dancers move together, no longer alone. Their faces light up, not with ease, but with fierce, joyful determination. They are not just dancing, they are preparing for life, side by side.
For those who know suffering, P O W E R offers something quietly powerful: recognition, healing, and hope. It ends as it began, with breath.
I’m breathing. I’m alive. Everything will be fine.
About the Authors
Lara Zammit
Lara Zammit is the arts and culture section editor at The Sunday Times of Malta. Apart from overseeing section coverage, she also contributes reviews and features across artistic genres, as well as opinion articles and editorials for the Times of Malta, where she also serves as a sub editor. She has contributed to numerous academic and non-academic publications and delivered a talk as part of ŻfinMalta’s Movimento series in 2023 on the intersection between writing and choreography. She graduated summa cum laude with a master’s degree in philosophy in 2019 from the University of Malta with a dissertation examining the preposition ‘with’ and the metaphysics of relation. Her research interests include those of metaphysics, aesthetics and classical philology as well as book conservation and papercraft.
Regina Egle Liotta Catrambone
Regina Egle Liotta Catrambone is a humanitarian leader, migration expert, and advocate for safe and legal routes for migration. As co-founder and former director of MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station) and founder and President of MAEC (Mediterranean Aid Education Centre), she has spearheaded life-saving humanitarian efforts worldwide. Through MOAS, she led the world’s first private search and rescue (SAR) operations, saving thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean and expanding aid missions to crisis zones in Libya, Bangladesh, Yemen, and Ukraine.
With MAEC, she continues to support vulnerable communities by providing food aid, education, and medical assistance. She is also Chairperson of Tangiers Group, overseeing strategic operations across multiple industries. A recognised thought leader in migration and humanitarian advocacy, Regina has spoken at UN forums, TEDx events, and international conferences.
Her achievements include launching the #SafeAndLegalRoutes campaign, publishing Raccogliere il Mare con un Cucchiaino (2023), and receiving prestigious awards such as the Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana and Malta’s Medal of the Republic. She has extensive field experience in SAR missions, refugee camps, and humanitarian crisis response. Fluent in multiple languages, she combines strategic leadership with hands-on humanitarian engagement, making a profound impact on global migration and aid initiatives.
This project is an initiative by Festivals Malta and Arts Council Malta, held as part of Dance Festival Malta. Supported by Valletta Design Cluster and Valletta Cultural Agency.
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