Ariella Vidach AiEP Dance Company

Ariella Vidach AiEP is an Italian dance company founded in Milan in 1996 by Ariella Vidach and Claudio Prati. Their shared vision was to create multimedia projects and develop an artistic language that explores the intersection of different disciplines, including dance, music, video and computer art, and design. For 30 years, the company’s artistic research has focused on the increasing complexity of interactivity, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between the body, choreography, interactive systems, robotics, and virtual reality.

Ariella Vidach (dancer and choreographer)

Ariella Vidach trained in New York in the 1980s, where she worked closely with leading figures of American postmodern dance, including Trisha Brown, Twyla Tharp, Dana Reitz, Steve Paxton, and Bill T. Jones.

Her choreographic work has been presented across the United States, Canada, Cuba, and numerous European countries, including France, Portugal, the Netherlands, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Germany, Slovakia, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria, Finland, Sweden, and Hungary.In 1996, she co-founded the Ariella Vidach–AiEP dance company in Milan with Claudio Prati. Through this collaboration, she creates multimedia performances that combine choreographic research with a strong focus on the relationship between the body and technology.In 2013, her artistic and technological research—developed in collaboration with Claudio Prati—received the WSA World Summit Award (e-Content), they were awarded a Special Prize at the Swiss Dance Awards in recognition of their innovation and research in choreographic language.

Her most recent projects actively engage audiences through the use of smartphones, immersive technologies, robotics, virtual reality, and virtual social platforms. Committed to supporting emerging artists, she fosters the choreographic research of younger generations through artistic residency programs. She lives and works between Milan and Lugano.

Claudio Prati (video artist and director)

Claudio Prati is a Swiss-born video artist and director. He studied gymnastics and sports in Zurich, sculpture at the Brera Academy, mime and pantomime at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, and video art and mixed-media projects at New York University under Peter Campus.

During his two-year stay in New York, he studied contact improvisation at Movement Research and Performance Space 122, worked in film with Shirley Clarke, trained in contemporary dance at the studios of Merce Cunningham and Alwin Nikolais, and performed in productions by Elizabeth Streb and Yoshiko Chuma.

In 1988, he founded the cultural association Avventure in Elicottero Prodotti in Lugano, and in 1996 he co-founded the Ariella Vidach–AiEP dance company in Milan. Since his earliest multimedia works, he has explored interactive systems, digital media, robotics, and virtual reality in choreography, in close collaboration with Ariella Vidach.

In 2013, his artistic and technological research, developed with Ariella Vidach, received the WSA e-Content Award for the interactive system INaxyz. In 2017, they were awarded a Special Prize at the Swiss Dance Awards.

His key works include EXP (1997), DanxyMusic (2003), Intervita (2007), HU Robot (2018), and DanceTheDistance (2020). His videodance projects have been presented at numerous international festivals.
He lives and works between Lugano and Milan.