wall dialogue resistance

A real limit and an imaginary place, showing the tension between the need for protection and the desire to go beyond what is known, the wall leads us to a spatial hidden dimension which is both physical and emotional. 

The project basic concept emerged in 2019 during a residence in Portugal, and has been transformed, finding new meaning and different way of working and presentation, due to the pandemic. It still remain a work in progress. Born as a participative project, in 2020 the project find an indirect way to involve people, stimulates everyone’s imagination, through a question: a short audio has been sent in order to collect voices, ideas, thoughts around the wall.

Recognizing the pivotal role of the body as a tool for listening, dialogue and participation, in person or remotely, we ask to replay to this question:That’s beyond the wall?

Wall site specific version at SA Manifattura for Autunno Danza Festival, Cagliari
September 2021

Artistic credits and cast:

Concept and Artistic direction: Sara Marasso and Stefano Risso 
Choreography and dance: Sara Marasso 
Sound design, live music and video: Stefano Risso
Borrowed voice: Michele Di Mauro 

Past Residencies 2019/2020: 
DevirCapa Centro de Artes Performativas do Algarve, Faro July 2019
 ResiDANZE di Primavera, Teatri di Vita, Bologna, June 2020
 Attraversamenti Multipli, Largo Spartaco Rome, September 2020

“[…] a wall without heavy moral layers, without judgment, and therefore open to interpretation. And so, the initial question “What is beyond the wall?” it diluted in a dialogue with the wall not as an obstacle but as a structural condition. The wall delimits the space, imposing on the performers internal trajectories that collide with the walls but without anguish: they are explorations and attempts at forcing, not assaults to destruction. And the question gets an oblique answer: It’s about us and invisible things, that Marasso writes in large letters on the wall, referring to the sense of the border and closure to an individual and social responsibility (which concerns us), but also to those things that we do not see: they’re beyond the wall, but they could be here, or inside. And, as if by magic, the enormous graffiti with the writing slowly fades away, as absorbed by the wall itself, sucked by the porosity of a concrete wall that seems to breathe as if it were alive.“(…)
Stefano Casi, June 2020