Archive

COMFORT

production ZTLpro/Angelo Mai, MK08
in collaboration with CanGo Cantieri Goldonetta Firenze.

by Philippe Barbut, Lorenzo Bianchi, Biagio Caravano, Jannick Da Sousa Mendes, Michele Di Stefano, Cristina Rizzo.

Thanx to Centro Enea for refugees in Rome.
debut May 3-4 2008, Teatro Palladium Roma
lenght 50'

Comfort is a geographic piece that goes through a territory without maps. Space is determined by instability and is unwrapped just like a present.
The dymanic of exploration is set up through a permanent decision-making. Forms are crossed in view of constant mobility. The choreographic identity of the performer is entrusted to the 'other' as a continuous removal of the self. This lack of stability meets with a strange attraction for the code, the hieroglyph and the folklore.We try to look into the sense of 'belonging' of a body to the outside world, at the border between home and an open field, with a fall in the background.
Dance makes presence and adaptation to the outside world – where other bodies and projects dart - possible; in this sens every start of the movement is a foundation and a breakdown. In this dance, tiime is a succession of propositions and disappearance. The choreography itself disappears, the body still remains.

TOURISM

production La Biennale di Venezia, Mk ed Esc electro-acoustic synthesis crew
in collaboration with CanGo Cantieri Goldonetta Firenze e Xing.

with Philippe Barbut, Biagio Caravano, Laura Scarpini
ESC: Lorenzo Bianchi, Michele Tadini
light: Vincenzo Dente
scientific cooperation: Stefano Osnaghi
choreography: Michele Di Stefano

lenght 45'

The work was commissioned by the Biennale di Venezia which asked Mk to concentrate on body movement in the light of new neuroscientific research.
In order to afford dance as an act of learning, the group builds a chain of actions tending to gradual convergences, according to the so-called phase locking ,a process that occurs whenever the chaotic actions of the individual shifts to the ordered actions of a collective system: (for example, populations of women living together may show phase-entrainment of their ovulation cycles).
The bodies enter this process to shape the habitat of a journey. As a group of tourists in a monitorized world, the performers abandon their maps to walk outside and shift together toward new coordinates, for a possible ending of pure synchronicity .
This choreography presents figures that are supposed to become unstable, intermittent, not-given: a body means in the first place what is out, nearby, against, with other bodies, man-to-man, hand-to-hand.

HAPPENED

production mk 08
in collaboration with Xing
From the prototype WASTED – intuizioni sul mondo in attesa che diventino una costruzione compiuta

A group of performers immerse themselves in an improper environment to live in. They reconstruct a prototype of precarious habitats – both domestic and wild – where one could experience all the imbalances that generate the ergonomic principles of survival. Each performer is asked to pick out a place and to construct his own private space in the form of a shed/shack/igloo etcetera.Every time I pass a motorway exit, I wonder about the vast fields of grass or the hills that act as central reservations, and I feel them as the ideal place for a foundation. (Maybe the most banal and also clearest image is: the little door of the cuckoo clock which is just about to open).

april 08
Sottopasso Ugo Bassi/Marconi, Bologna
WASTED- intuizioni sul mondo in attesa che diventino una costruzione compiuta

concept mk
with Lorenzo Bianchi, Cristina Rizzo, Marcello Maloberti, Sinistri, Marco Mazzoni, Flavio Favelli, Cuoghi & Corsello, MK + extra.
Production F.I.S.Co. 08 Festival Internazionale sullo Spettacolo Contemporaneo - Universal Cosmic Murmur

Living in an underground subway for 48 hours. What type of contribution can be made by these performers towards the urban planning of a makeshift slum or favela?
What type of relashionships one can establish, given the fact that the external remains something OUTSIDE you, and at the same time is INSIDE a collective project? (Where is my mind?)
The dynamics allow for experimental ways of communicating with the other housing units and to wander around the landscape that is being accomplished without a project (Walkabout). Being out immediately corrupts visibility, but every planning can be deprived of a representative accent without losing its ambiguity. (What?)
The dynamics can also strengthen the personal intuition of a performer according to the corporeal rituality of his own solitude, etc (Wake).
A corruptible process of descending and re-climbing: the subway is open to the public during the final part of the live-in experiment, displayed as a space-time agglomerate, the traces of the live-in experiment survive the meeting with the public (Wasted).
The meeting is a chaotic process, spread out over several hours.
A little area, a sound generator. Empty shacks, moves or 'visits to oneself'. Sedentary inhabitants with nomadic tendencies, that reconstruct and dismantle according to their desire for contact or for attention (Warning). External intrusions (Wolf).

July 08
Riva fiume Savio
Happened
mk + Cristina Rizzo + Le Supplici

DIVANO OCCIDENTALE

with: Philippe Barbut, Biagio Caravano, Laura Scarpini & guests
music: Starfuckers “Infinitive sessions” dbk 102
direction: Michele Di Stefano.

lenght 40' and more

project sostanzasonora 05
production MK
in collaboration with Xing '

Divano occidentale is a choreographic session deriving from the project sostanzasonora (Sound matter), from which it borrows the theme of the impossibility of any speech.. Its format is configured like an open structure, free to adopt new performers and intruders from the place were it stages. Diwan is an Arab word meaning a gathering, but also a song book, a collection of incidentale images and equally arbitrary captions. The bodies remain into the plot only as reverberating substance and continual reference to a misterious elsewhere. The dances appear in the chronological vacuum and the suspended threads of the unrecognisable.

FUNZIONE

with Philippe Barbut, Biagio Caravano and Laura Scarpini
Manuele Giannini guitar
Roberto Bertacchini drums
Alessandro Bocci electronics
Dino Bramanti electronics
direction: Michele Di Stefano

a project by mk/sinistri in cooperation with Xing

A band of musicians and one of performers alternate into two contiguous identical spaces. They apply different functions of their bodies but share the same oscillation in time. The permeable ideal line between the adjacent acts is the backbone of an asimmetric pulsating body of evidence

REAL MADRID

with Philippe Barbut, Rhuena Bracci, Biagio Caravano, Laura Scarpini, Mamadou Wade
the “N” people: Marco Valerio Amico, Matteo Lanfranchi, Marco Maretti
ESC: Lorenzo Bianchi, Michele Tadini
light design: Vincenzo Dente
choreography: Michele Di Stefano

lenght: 50'

project sostanzasonora 05
production MK - ESC electro-acoustic synthesis crew
Santarcangelo dei Teatri - festival Enzimi Rome- l'Arboreto Mondaino
in collaboration with Xing - Ass.cult.Mosaico Turin - Spazio Tadini Milan.
the Kroonde data system is developed by LaKitchen Paris

This project comes from a study of the material nature of sound. It starts in a place where volume meets phisical action. The production of images over time is set in an environment ruled by the detachedness of an alphabetical scansion and invaded by a massive presence of sound. Mk and Esc (an Italian French based music ensemble) opened up a common work front in 2004 to probe conditions in which bodies measure themselves within a representation, free to adhere to this mechanism or to turn their backs on it, sliding from one time and one image to the other. The project is entrusted to a series of captions for all the scenes; the body is at service of an arbitrary and elementary order that emphasises random images, or rather hosts and contains them, referring to a linguistic mechanism with the aim of allowing the impossibility of any dialogue to vibrate.

FORTEZZA

Our projects are liable to strong modification in time and space. We call “fortress” any of these evolutions of previous dance material into a unique episode, whose main object becomes the stretching or replacement of its inner rules. The space of the performance is often a very peculiar site (like a transparent oval box in the centre of Bologna) or a different concept of 'place' (e.g. the work of another choreographer).

March 02
Safari
Palazzo delle Esposizioni Roma
with Cristina Rizzo

March 02
Safari
Palazzo delle Esposizioni Roma
with Sistemi dinamici altamente instabili

January 04
Fortezza
Urban Frame – e.Bo Infobox Bologna
with Daniela Cattivelli and Fabrizio Favale

February 06
105 cugini in Mahabharata – Episodio II
by Le Supplici
Museo Civico Archeologico Bologna
with Florin and Nanou

April 07
Richard Meier
Museo dell'Ara Pacis Rome
with Elio Castellana, Daniela Cattivelli and Stefano Jorio

June 08
Fortezza
Acquario - Cartiere Boimond - isola del Liri
mk + guests

September 08
Fortezza
Bestiario festival/The inspired by Drome night,
ex mattatoio di Testaccio - Roma

BIRD WATCHING

with Philippe Barbut, Biagio Caravano, Laura Scarpini and guests
light equipment: Vincenzo Dente
live electronics: different collaborations
speaker and direction: Michele Di Stefano

lenght: variable from 30 to 45'.

production: MK, festival Enzimi Rome and Armunia festival in collaboration with Xing.

A modular performance suitable for every kind of space and made of a variable number of dances. Starting out (2004) as an experiment in which the performers acted only when they were certain of not being seen, it is now centered on different levels of ambiguity between action and language, according to the body's strange desire to assume a maximum of impenetrability to withdraw at the moment of maximum exposure. A speaker announces the short dances and describes their lenght, dynamics, anatomy, rhythmical selection and so on. The evidence of the body clashes with signs and gestures of a fictitious format, provoking an energetic reinvention of the bodytalk. Birdwatching staged in the main Italian cities and festivals during the last years, changing every time in structure and contents.

ADDOMINALE BIANCO

with: Philippe Barbut, Biagio Caravano, Michele Di Stefano and Laura Scarpini
music and live-el: Paolo Sinigaglia
light and set: Vincenzo Dente
choreography: Michele Di Stefano.

lenght 44'

production MK
in collaboration with Teatro Metastasio Prato

A visceral throb and a superficial fragility set up a performance made of echoes and opalescences. It doesn't reflect anything nor shows a direction. Everything is referred to the skin's elasticity and its prehensile desires. These bodies cannot recognize themselves, so they play just “time”. There's no design anymore but a skin-deep sparkling, which removes opacity from the ineluctable. In order to allow a new dullness to exist for a moment, with no memory nor history.

ZERO MOSES

with: Philippe Barbut, Biagio Caravano, Michele Di Stefano and Laura Scarpini + one intruder
music and live-el: Paolo Sinigaglia
light and set: Vincenzo Dente
choreography: Michele Di Stefano

lenght 33'

production MK
in cooperation with Teatri90 Festival Milan

Dance generates a field which is OUTof the body: an open space, a clearing. It's force is a continuous rhythmical displacement. Bodies experience a wild act with no name. They find a crooked identity. A vaudeville.

MK ULTRA

with: Philippe Barbut, Biagio Caravano, Michele Di Stefano and Laura Scarpini
music: Paolo Sinigaglia
light design: Vincenzo Dente
choreography: Michele Di Stefano

lenght 22'

production MK

These dances differ one from another for their inner quality; they just share the same attempt at making the perception of body's movement unstable. Choreography renounces its strategical lines to insist on displacement: a visual format which oscillates on the void side of an act.

E-INK

with: Biagio Caravano and Michele Di Stefano
music: Paolo Sinigaglia
light: Vincenzo Dente
choreography and costumes: Michele Di Stefano

lenght 12'

production MK
in collaboration with Teatri90 festival Milan

This work was born from the interest in the means of trasmission of oracular and divinatory messages, which are the result of a destabilization, even if they look formally precise. Their need to communicate is exact and ambiguous at the same time and is organized on the temporary domestication of what, for its natural character, has always to be rewritten, reinvented and misunderstood Maybe through the constant change of the bodily conditions and their non-consequential mixture it is possible to approach this unusual point of view as well as the potential of a changing writing (like future electronic inks) which can only be read as a presentiment.