VIE Scena Contemporanea Festival

The breathing us

Francesca Proia

29/05/2012 , 21:00
30/05/2012 , 18:00

ideation, choreography, costume Francesca Proia
composition, research, interpretation Francesca Proia, Danilo Conti
artistic collaboration Antonella Piroli
Botteghina – Progetti sartoriali
special thanks to Adele Cacciagrano
with the support of REACT! (Resistenze Artistiche Creative Transdisciplinari) Regione Emilia Romagna, Assessorato alla Cultura

Project awarded of Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes – Parigi; Ajuntamiento de Huesca e Centro Cultural matadero – Huesca- Spagna
in collaboration with Festival Homunculus, Ravenna (Comune di Ravenna, Assessorato alla Cultura)

Running time 2h

World première

Reservation required

One of the most unique artists of the Italian dance scene, Francesca Proia is author, choreographer and performer of her own new, original work.
The protagonists of The breathing us is a couple, a man and a woman. On stage, they confront each other in order to expose the field of force that comes to life when masculine and feminine meet. They use breathing as thin communication channel: man and woman are two poles attracted by the magnetic force generated through respiration.
It is pretty easy to detect, in this performance, the influence of a “philosophy of breath” that Francesca Proia derives from yoga, a discipline that she has been practicing since almost twenty years and about which she has recently written in Declinazioni yoga dell’immagine corporea (Titivillus Editions, 2011 ). "In yoga - says Francesca Proia – we don't believe in the claim that a breath is just a breath: a breath can be flexible as the body, multiform as thoughts.” Inhalation, internal retention, exhalation, external retention: every respiratory phase can have a different duration, used to represent different phases of the death-life cycle, which at the level of the macrocosm, correspond to the cycles of manifestation and dissolution of the universal matter: Brahman's day and night. Concentration is led to the concept of (respiratory) rhythm intended as original impetus for the world's creation:
this generates a philosophy of breathing, a way of carrying oneself out, towards the Other, and then back inside again, in a cycle that snags out microcosm.” If you consider the body as a nucleus made of a matter as subtle and ethereal as breath, it opens up for everyone the possibility to re-establish and expand the notions of perception and relation of our own body, using only the language of breathing. On stage, in an indefinite space and time, a man and a woman join in one body and maintain a direct connection, a magnetic link through the breath, which leads them to find a common ground, energetic and perceptive, made of waves in emotional strain.

www.francescaproia.tumblr.com

Francesca Proia

One of the most unique and suggestive artist of the italian dancing scene, Francesca Proia has collaborated for a long time with the choreographer Monica Francia and butoh dancer Masaki Iwana. Proia has been a choreography assistant and dancer for Romeo Castellucci, director of Tragedia Endogonidia. She is a member of the dance company “Habillé d'Eau”, directed by Silvia Rampelli.
Starting from 2004, Francesca elaborates a personal and unique choreographic path, together with Danilo Conti, actor, director and author. Her work focuses on the body and its energy in relation with objects, spaces and perceptions.
Proia starts practicing and studying yoga in 1992, achieving, little by little, an international and specialistic background. She keeps researching on yoga origins.
She is one of the artists in Overground, Visioni dalla Scena performativa italiana, an editorial project started with photographer Luca del Pia and performing arts scholars Lucia Amara, Piersandra Di Matteo, Adele Cacciagrano and Tihana Maravić (Boiler Edizioni, 2011).
She is author of Declinazioni yoga dell'immagine corporea, published by Titivillus Edizioni (2011). As a member of the association TCP – Tanti Cosi Progetti, together with Assessorato alla Cultura of the city of Ravenna and Homunculus, an annual research project on the human body in relation to different philosophies and arts.

The show

Programme