Utopian Body (CH/IT): La forme de l’âme

Modern Body Festival proudly presents the Dutch premiere of the Utopian Body project!

Utopian Body: La forme de l’âme

La forme de l’âme (The form of the soul) is a live performance piece inspired by the writings of Jean-Luc Nancy, one of the most important living philosophers. It is a multidisciplinary production, in which dance, video (as lighting creating solid spaces), electronic music, and the voice of Nancy himself reading his texts interact with each other to form a single organism. The invisible substance of the sound marks the tempo, the passage of time, in which the seasons of the body pass from birth, through life to death. The lighting, made solid by smoke, is charged with the task of designing the spaces inhabited by the body: Light and Body come alive, divide, follow each other only to disappear into nothingness. “Thereby the body dies and carries its secret to the grave, leaving only the slightest hint of its passing”. (Jean-Luc Nancy).

The vision of the body, of the naked body, is at once reassuring and obscene. Reassuring because it is familiar but at the same time, as spectators, it reminds us of our own bodies. As ruthlessly put by Michel Foucault, “I may as well go the ends of the earth, hide under my covers in the morning, melt in the sun on a beach, he [the body] will always be where I am. My body is the place to which I am condemned without appeal.” The performance courageously stages the tragic reality of the limits and finality into which we are thrown and the mystery toward which we are inexorably led.

Direction, video projection: Fabrizio Rosso (CH/IT)
Dance, choreography: Elena Boillat (CH)
Music, sound projection: Nadir Vassena (CH)
Text, voice: Jean-Luc Nancy

Multidisciplinary integrated performance (dance, video, music)

Date
2 Dec

Time
22:15-23:00

Venue
De Nieuwe Regentes
Grote Zaal

Module
Performance

Links
Utopian Body
Fabrizio Rosso
Nadir Vassena

BIOS

Fabrizio Rosso, Utopian Body director

 

 

Elena Boillat, Utopian Body performer

 

 

 

Nadir Vassena, Utopian Body composer

Fabrizio Rosso (CH/IT) has been focusing on creating and directing performances, films and pieces of music-theatre. He studied music at the conservatoires of Turin, Zürich, Lugano and film direction at the USC School of Cinematic Art, Los Angeles (US). In 2004 he collaborated with Karlheinz Stockhausen on several projects including the premiere of Sonntags-Abschied, the last piece of the LICHT cycle Operas. He directed and collaborated to create several projects in various locations including: Berliner Festspiele, Piccolo Teatro (Milano), Teatro Manzoni (Bologna), Tonhalle Zürich, Biennale Venezia. In 2014 he directed the performance La Extravagancia #0 by Rafael Spregelburd, which was selected for 2° Schweizer Theatertreffen. In 2015 his short movie New Incessantly Endless won “Best Religious and Spiritual Award” at Great Lakes International Film Festival, Pennsylvania (US).

Elena Boillat (CH/IT) is a performer and choreographer. After studying contemporary dance and Butoh in Tuscany, and obtaining a degree in Art studies and Performing arts at the University of Florence, Elena attended the studio at the School of Theatre Dance and Dramatic Arts Paolo Grassi in Milan, graduating as a dancer and performer, and working with international choreographers like Jonah Bokaer, Cesc Gelabert, Dominique Dupuy and the playwright and director Dario Fo. She has created motion performances in collaboration with the Conservatory of Italian Switzerland and other artistic companies, in Switzerland and abroad, working for several productions with experimental directors. A member of DANZA SIA (Swiss Italian Dancers), Elena is also a founding member of the Theater company DOMESTICALCHIMIA.

Nadir Vassena (CH) is a composer from Lugano. He has received numerous invitations to renowned festivals for new music and received many accolades, such as the West German Radio competition in 1992, the Music Institute of the ‘Hochschule der Künste’ in Berlin 1994 (first prize ex aequo), the Mozart Competition in Salzburg 1997, and the Christoph-Delz Foundation Prize. Nadir was a scholar of the ‘Akademie Schloss Solitude’ in Stuttgart in 2000/2001, of the ‘Denkmalschmiede Hogen/Margarethen Foundation’ in 2002, and a member of the Swiss Institute in Rome 2002/2003. In 2015 he was nominated for the Swiss Music Prize. Nadir Vassena, together with Mats Scheidegger, was artistic director of the ‘tage für neue musik zürich’ (2004-2012). He is Professor of Composition at the ‘Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana’.