FORMA

Pathosformel - “The Skinny Distance”, "The Timidity of Bones" (Italy)

Pathosformel was born in Venice in 2004 combining elements from different disciplines to reconstruct meanings interchangeably carried by: presence of a man and a theatre sign on a stage. In January 2009 Pathosformel received the UBU Prize – one of the most prestigious theatre prizes in Italy: “for the theatre which combines presence of a man and an abstract sign on a stage.”

Skinny distance

The performance was presented for the first time during VIE Festival in Modena in October 2008, the winner of the Iceberg Prize in 2009.

A geometric opera without words. Flat colourful squares move along horizontal surfaces, manipulated by means of threads. They meet and pass each other like people walking on a crowded city square. They stop for a moment to continue their wandering like elements of a perfectly programmed machine. Two-dimensional witnesses of everyday meetings or notes of a Gregorian piece which never written down? Music played live on the violin and the harmonium adds another interpretative layer and seems to be following the movement of every figure, like in a silent cinema showing illustrated with music. Human bodies have been turned into anonymous squares, as if in a magical tale, and are waiting for the spell to be broken with audience’s eyes. Between human relationships and laws of geometry. This experience of combination of genres: a figure theatre, contact dance, concert, art installation… cannot be squeezed into any frame.

Daniel Blanga Gubbay
Paola Villani
with
Danilo Morbidoni
Alberto Napoli
Production: Pathosformel/FIES Factory One.
Co-production: Centrale Fies and Santarcangelo Festival 2008/ 38^ edition, L’arboreto – Teatro Dimora di Mondaino.
 

The Timidity of Bones

Fragments of a bas-relief are blossoming against the background of a milky matter. From the white surface, human remains or the debris of a buried civilization appear.
The progression of the images unveils the making of a body. Like a foetus gradually forming its sex, the bodies discover their nature little by little. Nose, thigh-bone, knuckles and shoulder blades are shown through a thin epidermis of the screen. These phantasms alter our perception of the human body by doing a radiographic dance. The body is reduced to its frame; physiognomy, distinguishing marks and flesh have vanished. It is like losing memory, vanishing.. An attempt at a new record, registration of body without leaving any traces or witnesses. All this is accompanied by contemporary, trance, industrial music, incomplete, fragmentary, scattered sounds…A shadow theatre, painting, sculpture, haiku on vanishing, this exceptional experience is very hard to define.

Daniel Blanga Gubbay
Francesca Bucciero
Paola Villani
In collaboration with Milo Adami
Production: Pathosformel 2007/ FIES Factory One
In collaboration with Sezione Autonoma – Teatro Comandini. Cesena, Italy
 

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