You have now reached the end of your artistic residency in Argentina. How did you find this time?
I was in a constant state of surprise and emotion. This city, whose electric ferment never seems to stop, is inhabited by people who know how to love. I cannot describe in any other way this feeling that accompanied me. There is a kind of common understanding towards happiness, and as an outsider it becomes inevitable that you try to tune into it.
Collaborating with the Italian Cultural Institutes is a good opportunity to make your art known in the world. Is it your first time collaborating with our network? Where else in the world would you like to take your art?
In the past, many of my other residency or touring activities were supported by the Italian Cultural Institutes and I firmly believe that their planning is crucial for performing artists. For “living” works it’s crucial to be aware of contexts outside of Europe: to meet different and distant audiences and communities, who invite one to continuously correct one’s posture and which ask the work to become permeable, to adapt, in a continuous empathic exercise. Right now I think I would like to get to know South America better: I feel a very instinctive call.
You are the author of various shows. Why did you decide to bring Avalanche to Buenos Aires?
It was a decision made with Elisabetta Riva of Teatro Coliseo, who really wanted me to be here. I think it was the best decision since this is the first project I am presenting to the public in Buenos Aires: it sums up many things that represent me. There is a piece on the body linked to memory, a very strong relationship with the voice and the text, which I have developed in all my subsequent shows, and it oscillates between two registers, one more popular (linked to a certain pop culture) and the other more universal (linked to humans in the broadest sense). And also because it is performed with me by Teresa Silva, a formidable Portuguese dancer.
How did your artistic language, which is so original, come about, and what are your sources of inspiration?
That’s a very tricky question to answer. I don’t know if my artistic language is really original. I rarely think about language or poetics in general; instead, every time I create a performance I naturally ask myself what specific tools does that specific project need: from there I proceed, trying to be rigorous but at the same time never losing my playfulness with the material. There are surely reoccurring elements (for example a certain way of using the script, a persistence in putting the body in front of the memory, the curiosity for the ways in which the audience are invited to watch a performance), but they’re never programmed. And also as far as my sources of inspiration are concerned, I would say that everything is a source: from literature, both prose and poetry (Munro and Rosselli are my favourite authors), to music, to theatre and, of course, to dance. However, inspiration is also something that happens to me, it is not an action that I perform: what I enjoy as a reader, spectator or listener, fuels the desire in me to do, to create, and the ambition to offer at least a few seconds of grace and luminosity.
What is the audience’s response to your performances, and what has been the response of the Argentinian audience in particular?
The Argentinian audience has amazed us with their extreme attention, curiosity and their understanding, which I would say was emotional before being intellectual. Even though there is never “an audience”: wherever we showcase our work, even in those situations where we seem to know something of the cultural context, we always address individualities, specific histories and sensitivities, and our ability to understand what is REALLY happening is very limited. This mystery always makes the encounter with the audience an enigma, a romantic rendezvous.
