SIPAM 2025 – Pitch Project Session: official selection announced

We are delighted to announce the ten selected projects from the SIPAM 2025 Pitch Project Session.

Following a competitive selection process and inspiring live presentations, the jury has chosen a diverse and compelling group of proposals that reflect the future of international performing arts.

Selected Projects – SIPAM 2025 Pitch Session


Colossus – Aurora Nova

Tale of the Firebird – Concerto for Violin, Fire & Acrobatic Orchestra – The Freestyle Orchestra

Teorema – TNRS

BALLET <GAT> – ICONTACT

Play Dead – Aurora Nova

Kuma – Vertigo

ELECTROFLAMENCO 3.0 – ARTOMÁTICO

The Cloud – laGeste (former les ballets C de la B)

The Tragedy of Man – Hungarian State Theatre of Timișoara

A Doll's House – Plexus Polaire

We extend our sincere thanks to all applicants who submitted their projects this year. Your creativity, boldness, and artistic vision continue to inspire us.

This year's selection was made by an international jury of esteemed professionals: Gilles Doré, Roy Luxford, Harold David, Amy Cassello, Vicențiu Rahău, and Alicia Adams.

If your project was not selected this time, please know that your work is deeply appreciated. We look forward to future opportunities to connect and collaborate.

We warmly invite you to join us for a new edition of SIPAM, where we’ll meet beautiful people, share good energy, and discover projects waiting to be brought to life.

Follow us for more updates and festival news at www.sibiuartsmarket.ro and on our official social media channels.

About the Selected Shows
Colossus – Aurora Nova
Colossus is an exhilarating contemporary dance performance for up to 60 local dancers, created by internationally renowned Australian choreographer Stephanie Lake. At its heart, Colossus explores humanity and the exquisite complexity of living in close proximity to one another. The show is choreographically intricate, thematically bold, and described as a ‘kick to the solar plexus.’ It is at once delicately intimate and explosively dynamic. Featuring 50 student dancers in the original production, it delves into the joy and tension of collective experience and the navigation of individuality within the mass.

Tale of the Firebird – Concerto for Violin, Fire & Acrobatic Orchestra – The Freestyle Orchestra
The Freestyle Orchestra is an interdisciplinary collective fluent in both classical music and contemporary circus disciplines, creating integrated performance experiences that explore the intersection of physical and musical artistry. Equally at home in concert halls or street shows, their highlights include the Venice Biennale and Wiener Festwochen Opening. Tale of the Firebird has been showcased at CIRKLABO, Assembly Roxy, Ypres City of Wings, and MICC Montreal.

Teorema – TNRS
Inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini’s novel and reimagined through Yann Verburgh’s dramaturgy, Teorema is a powerful exploration of identity, desire, and otherness. Directed by Eugen Jebeleanu, the performance centers on a mysterious visitor who disrupts the order of a conventional household, catalyzing repressed desires and personal revelations. This intimate and political fable confronts audiences with profound questions about self-awareness, alienation, and freedom to assume one’s true identity — a bold artistic manifesto on the stranger within us all.

BALLET <GAT> – ICONTACT
Inspired by the traditional Korean hat gat, this original ballet presents a fresh narrative reflecting Korea’s historical class system through stylized choreography. The project highlights an underexplored cultural object as a central choreographic element, showcasing Korea’s artistic identity and expanding the international potential of Korean creative ballet. By blending Korean themes with Western ballet form, GAT aims to engage global audiences and promote cultural exchange through touring.

Play Dead – Aurora Nova
Set in a universe of domestic trappings and interlocking stories, Play Dead observes the beautiful, twisted, and laughable facets of human behavior. Through dynamic physicality and visual storytelling, the piece offers a surrealist chronicle of the familiar. Far from fatalism, it marvels at the absurdity of the mundane and celebrates life’s pulsing desire for connection and intimacy, echoing the desperation of dancing to the last song before a party ends.

Kuma – Vertigo
A unique collaboration between a musical ensemble led by Itamar Douari and the Vertigo Dance Company, Kuma oscillates between structured choreography and improvisation. The piece immerses audiences in the tension between music and movement, exploring the contraction and expansion of the heart and the gaze of the eyes as they open and close. Amidst external chaos, the dancers search for anchors between falling and rising, creating moments of rest within sound and motion.

ELECTROFLAMENCO 3.0 – ARTOMÁTICO
This trio performance blends live electronics and sound art with flamenco dance and contemporary saxophone. Rooted in Spanish flamenco and classical avant-garde music, Electroflamenco 3.0 generates a unique language through sampling, processing, and transcending music. The result is a deeply harmonious auditory, visual, and emotional experience.

The Cloud – laGeste
The Cloud investigates the fragile boundary between reality and fiction in the age of Artificial Intelligence. As reality shifts into the digital realm, it morphs into a hyperobject of symbolic excess, evoking parallels with nuclear energy’s uncontrollable transformations. The piece interweaves human and non-human agencies, fact and fiction, biography and history, probing both the radioactive Chernobyl cloud and the intangible AI data cloud. It questions the singularity of the human body — its fragility, resilience, decay, and hope for post-apocalyptic rebirth.

The Tragedy of Man – Hungarian State Theatre of Timișoara
Reflecting on modernity’s mechanized world, this production draws on Madách Imre’s work, portraying history as a satanic nightmare dreamed by Adam. Amid despair, the promise of salvation offers meaning and hope, with Eva carrying the Messiah — a symbol of love and acceptance that transcends conflict and confronts the human condition’s inspiring mission.

A Doll's House – Plexus Polaire
A bold reimagining of Ibsen’s classic by Yngvild Aspeli, A Doll’s House blends puppetry, dance, voice, and striking visuals. Aspeli, a leading contemporary puppeteer, brings Nora’s awakening and fight for freedom to life through a haunting interplay of actors and hybrid puppets. The immersive production blurs illusion and reality in a charged emotional landscape.