Artist Archivi - Page 10 of 10 - WORKSPACE RICERCA X

‘I am shape, in a shape doing a shape’
Berlin, 2014

‘I am shape, in a shape doing a shape’ is a solo piece by the Berlin-based Italian choreograper and dancer Barbara Berti. In a free-flowing mixture of movement and language, of preconceived sequences and improvisation, Berti explores the interplay between the dancer and the spectators — an experiment in sensitivity where the slightest change in energy in the room may be picked up and amplified. The result is a performance full of quick shifts in atmosphere: from lyrical to humorous to matter-of-fact to philosophical.

This solo revels and bring in conversation the lecture that a public does within a performance in interaction with own inner space.

In her research in these past few year she has been exploring the human body and mind, developing an approach to dance performance through a method, that examines the effects of the hidden connection between the body, the mind and how those manifest in relation with an audience, started from a research in empathy.
‘I am shape, in a shape doing a shape’ won the HAU2 Theatre’s Jury Award during the 100° Festival in Berlin, 2014. Berti uses a system she began exploring in a duo piece called “Aoouuu”, developed in 2013. Presented with the first piece of the research in 2014 in the festival Tanztage Berlin.

Born and raised in Bologna, Italy, Barbara Berti bases herself in Berlin. She works on her own choreographic projects and collaborates with dance and theatre artists in performance art work through Western Europe, like: Judith Seng, Tino Seghal, Gabi Schilling.

She rooted her career in graphic design then in physical theatre and dance; continued studying different techniques in contemporary dance, contact improvisation and Body-Mind Centering approaches. she is interested in issues of kinesthetic empathy and the embodied transmission of physical experience in the interaction with the audience. In 2014, winner of the Jury prize HAU 2 of her solo “I am a shape, in a shape, doing a shape” for the festival 100° Be.

Since 2018 she is part of the curatorial team of Workspace Ricerca X – Dramaturgy and research.

resident artist 2018

Within the archipelago of my research, January 2018 residency will be focused on two principal islands.

The first one will be the continuation of Siate misteriosi e sarete felici in which the working trajectory includes choreography conceived as the formation of a landscape whose principal matter is atmosphere and its variability. This might means to choreograph the air contained within a space as well as to choreograph the behavior contained within a movement. What kind of choreographic condition may result from a proposition of this kind? Or better how will choreographic intention behave faced to such idea?

The second island implies the choice of a point of view on the first one and is dominated by the title “Spectacular research: can research be entertaining?”. This sentence will be the framework of the experiment driven by the fundamental question How to present a research and how to look a research?

resident artist 2015-16

Siate misteriosi e sarete felici<br />(If you’ll be mysterious, you will be happy). This sentence was sculpted on wood at the entrance of Gauguin’s house on the Hiva Oa island. This is the title I have chosen for my actual research.
The work is part of a wider project based on the idea to experience time and space in a different ways through collective actions with the aim to blur the line between objects and subjects and other kinds of dualisms.

In a letter of 1939 Walter Benjamin writes about the end of time saying that the ideas and the pieces of art will join the realm of nature as, like nature, they reveal themselves by veiling themselves. Thus, the objects exist at the same time in a mysterious as well in an open way. Within the frame of Ricerca X I will be looking to create a set of tools to process behavior as a movement and collective behavior as a choreography. Specifically I am interested to understand how a collective behavior can affect the space and create a specific atmosphere.

Ambra Pittoni is a performance artist and researcher interested in how the entanglement between bodily practices and spatial circumstances emerge as a territory of affectivity and as a vehicle of unexplored epistemological potentialities. To that extent she uses choreography, somatic practices, installation, sound and writing to explore and produce fictional bodies, knowing modalities, collective circumstances of getting to know.

She graduated at the University Paris 8 with a thesis on The end of art and she is a PhD candidate at the Linz University of the Arts with the project The promise of the abyss – Body practices and new spaces of knowledge. In 2022 she has been a fellow of the VALIE EXPORT center. Among others she presented her works at OGR (Turin), PAV (Turin), Fondazione Baruchello (Rome), Crédac (Ivry sur Seine), De Appel (Amsterdam), Maga Museum of art (Milan), CCA Zamek Ujazdowski (Warsaw), Ashkal Alwan (Beyrut), Roberta (Frankfurt), Sophiensaele (Berlin). She has been visiting professor at NABA (Milan) and ENSAPC (Cergy). Recent publications are The Saintly Hypochondriac, by The School of the End of Time) published in L’ANO SOLARE, a year long programme about sex and self-display, curated by Il Colorificio, published by Axis Axis, Ten obvious and not so obvious questions about artistic research, in the Artistes Chercheur.es / Chercheur.es artistes Performer Les Savoirs, curated by Chloé Dechery and Marion Boudier and published by Les presses du réel.

Together with Paul-Flavien Enriquez-Sarano and Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti she found The School of the End of Time, a research based institution with a non hierarchical approach between theoretical and artistic research.

Since 2018 she is part of the curatorial team of Workspace Ricerca X – Dramaturgy and research.

“(…) Tutto quello che c’è di fisico nella vita non è fatto solo di materia solida, ma piuttosto di campi di energia o da schemi ritmici di informazioni. Tutta la materia è piuttosto “nessuna cosa” (energia) che “qualche cosa (particelle)” J. Dispensa

I am interested in the empty space, devoid of superfluity and preconceived schemes; the life that is born from this vacuum and the pace at which it evolves. A body that is receptive opens itself up to possibilities of time and space and continually feeds the imagination, maintaining a constant dialogue inside and out, between something that is set and the spontaneous creativity that emerges staying in the present; between activeness and passiveness.

Cinzia Sità, dancer, graduated in Choreographic Composition from the National Academy of Dance in Rome, immediately followed by a two-year course of higher education in Scripture for Contemporary Dance directed by Raffaella Giordano. She continued her artistic exploration studying with, among others, Carolyn Carlson, Susanne Linke, Julyen Hamilton, David Zambrano, Pierre Droulers and under scholarship at Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch. She credits her meeting with Francesco Scavetta at the Centre for Performing Arts, Tanum in Vitlycke fundamental for her research in movement analysis.
Since 2012, Sità has been an Associate Artist of Sosta Palmizi. As a performer, she has worked with Raffaella Giordano, Giorgio Rossi, Oretta Gonzo, Daniele Ninarello, Arearea Company, Amina Amici, Caterina Genta, Francesca Beatrice View, Helen Cerina, for the visual artist Valentina Vetturi and as a collaborater with the dance theater group Samotracia. She has also participated in projects directed by Gabriela Carrizo (Peeping Tom), Juliana Neves and Quan Bui Ngoc (Les Ballets C de la B).
In 2011, along with 11 other artists, she founded Famigliafuch , an artistic collective focusing on movement research. Famigliafuch has participated in the Santarcangelo Festival 2011, the FAST-Terni Festival and was selected for Takla Making Arts. They were finalists of Premio Equilibrio 2012 with the project Quaderni. Her solo Medea, nel luogo della mia memoria, a project supported by Sosta Palmizi, was selected for Raid Off 2014.
Currently, Sità alternates between roles as choreographer and performer. She has also begun to use the voice as a motor and counteraction of movement itself, with the intention of expanding her peculiar sense of expression. In addition, she teaches freelance, primarily in Italy.

Stefano Tomassini è ricercatore presso lo IUAV di Venezia, insegna all’USI di Lugano ed è consulente per la danza per i programmi di LuganoInScena al LAC.

È stato Fulbright Schuman Research Scholar (20082009), ScholarinResidence all’archivio del Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (2010) e Associate Research Scholar all’Italian Academy for Advanced Studie in America della Columbia University (2011).

Dal 2013 al 2016 ha collaborato ai programmi del settore Danza della Biennale di Venezia. Nel 2016 ha ottenuto una residenza di studio presso Scenario Pubblico Centro Nazionale di Produzione della Danza di Catania.

Category: Artist

Barbara Berti

Ambra Pittoni

Cinzia Sità

Marco Berrettini

Stefano Tommassini