Riccardo Buscarini wins The Place Prize

Posted on April 29, 2013

London-based choreographer Riccardo Buscarini (pictured) won The Place Prize for dance 2013 on Saturday, April 27. He received the top prize of £25,000 for his work Athletes, a reflection on competition viewed as tension between man and machine.

This was the fifth Place Prize, a biannual competition sponsored by Bloomberg. It is a contest for commissioned works, with participating choreographers given funds, free studio time and technical support to create new work. This year’s finalists were Buscarini, h2dance, Rick Nodine and Eva Recacha.

Buscarini is an Italian dancer and choreographer, trained at London Contemporary Dance School. In 2011, he was a Place Prize finalist with Antonio de la Fe, and became a creative in residence at The Hospital Club. Athletes, created in collaboration with fashion designer Brooke Roberts, features three female dancers in a futuristic landscape created by Lucy Hansom and Michael Mannion’s lighting design.

Buscarini was the unanimous choice of the panel of judges. His next work Friends, is a collaboration with Runa Kaiser. It will be shown at The Place on June 22, as part of the London theatre’s Spring Loaded season.

Zoe Anderson

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.