Gallery

Director’s Notes

This performance is about augmented reality and robotics, and offers a choreographic experience that opens to multiple levels of sensory perceptions. The dancers get dismembered and multiplied within an unconventionally conceived space, misshaped by a repeatedly changing viewpoint, where a robot is placed on the stage and projects their digitally duplicated frames. A duet between the human being and his doppleganger, between man and robot, tells the full unsettling story of our present time, when in the attraction that compels towards progress in science and technology often seems to abide the threatening risk of loss of humanity. The movement unfolds its dance within a non-narrative context and turns the events to sensory experiences for the audience, that on getting themselves captured and projected on the stage walls, try their chance to face up with their alter ego.

We are living the time of the effective integration between human beings and automata and the constant attendance with machines that seem endowed with faculties typical of mankind, such as speech and behavior, arouse many questions and doubts. What are the psychological and ethical effects of this increasingly deep and intimate coexistence and interaction? What are the new forms and modes of communication and to what extent can the physical and psychic relationships between physical bodies and automaton be pushed? The performance proposes visions and perspectives in relation to the questions posed and the aspects that create more worries and fears, focusing attention on the forms of communication, dialogue and interaction between the new generation of collaborative robots and human beings. Using technology to enhance observation, the work proposes the empathic and immersive experience of an inorganic, artificial, infinite dimension, available out of the ordinary. In this way, an increased “look” and “listening” can lead to a better understanding of the virtual dimension that increasingly permeates our existence.

Credits

Concept and Direction
Ariella Vidach, Claudio Prati

in Co-Production with
LIS Lugano in scena
Ariella Vidach AiEP / Avventure in Elicottero Prodotti

with the support of
MIBAC Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali
Repubblica e Cantone Ticino – Fondo Swisslos
DAC Comune di Lugano
Comune di Milano

Choreography
Ariella Vidach

Original Music
Luca Salvadori

Technical Sponsor
Universal Robots

Ariella Vidach / Choreographer and dancer

Ariella Vidach began producing her choreography in New York where she moved in the 80’s inspired by the work of the most significant artists of the postmodern dance generation as Trisha Brown, Dana Reitz, Steve Paxton and with the aim to deepen her study in contemporary dance. Her work was presented in the United States, Canada, Germany, Holland, France, Switzerland, the Slovak Repub-lic, Slovenia and Macedonia, Turkey, Luxemburg, Cuba and Portugal.She is co-founder of Avventure in Elicottero Prodotti , founded in 1988 in Lugano and she creates in 1996 with Claudio Prati, the Ariella Vidach – AiEP dance company with which she produced multimedia perfor-mance among others: Exp (’96), Drans (’98) and Beat Box (’00), Opus (2001), Buffers (2003), DanxyMusic (2004), Id (2005), Intervita (2007), .Mov (2009).The Ariella Vidach – AiEP dance company has an artistic space inside Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, an industrial archeological area that was restored and reused as cultural and artistic venues.
She currently teaches at Scuola D’Arte Drammatica Paolo Grassi and Art Academy of Brera and continues her re-search producing performances concerning the relationship between body and technology.

Claudio Prati / Videomaker and director

Graduated in Sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milano, he lived in New York between 1986 and 1988, where he studied Video art and Special Project mixed media at New York University, as well as Con-tact Im-provisation Dance at the Movement Research Centre and PS 122. In 1988 in Lugano (Switzerland), he founded Avventure in Elicottero Prodotti cultural Association with Ariella Vidach, Carlo Somaini and Marcello Mazzella and in 1996 he was the founding partner of Ariella Vidach – AiEP dance company in Milan. Between 1989 and 2016 he produced 25 multimedia interactive dance productions, in collaboration with Ariella Vidach, and various dance videos, inspired to the performances, which were presented in several interna-tional dance Festivals in Paris, Skop-je, Ankara, New York, Montreal, La Havana, Roma, Freiburg, Arnhem, Ljubliana, Luxembourg, Bern, Zuerich and in Video Dance Festivals like the “TTV Video Festival of Riccione”, “Electronic Choreographer of Naples″, Video-dance (Athens), Invideo Festival (Milan) and in Tel Aviv, Oslo, Lu-zern. He was member of the jury of some interna-tional and prestigious video and multimedia contests like “VI-PER Luzern”, in 1996, “Premio Immagine IBTS/Milano” in 1997, “Prix PIXEL IMAGINA– INA Monte Carlo “in 1998 and “Il Coreografo Elettronico/Napoli”in 1999. Between 2016 and 2017, in collaboration with Ariella Vidach, he produced two new dance performances with a special glance into the relation of dance and technology. He lives and works in Lugano and Milan.