What does it mean for you to inhabit a space during a residency period?
First and foremost, it means disorientation. But it's a necessary disorientation because it opens up the door to opportunities, to reconfigurations and to questions.
For me, living in a residency space involves relational issues, thus paying attention to where I position myself, to how I position myself, to what I wear and don't wear. This constant calling myself into question is a crucial tool for preventing me from becoming a victim of my own narratives. What light does this place show me in, right now, with these people? How do I position myself in it?
How would you define the space of your work and research? What will you investigate on this occasion?
The space in Something kind of hit me today is the priority channel through which we relate to ourselves, through which we get in touch with our body and with our position.
It may sound ironic to explore relations using the solo format, yet that is precisely the thing that has opened up new questions for us regarding the relationship between the body and space and that has allowed us to approach the body itself as a system of relations.
In this work, space allows us constantly to rebalance the attention that we devote to things, and to enter into a perceptive state that is not hierarchical or predefined but spread out as broadly as possible over relationships that the presence of the body inscribes in the environment. We don't try to move here, we try to move from here. We don't try to be in a relationship, we try to be a part of the relationship.
This is going to be what's known as a technical residency, a residency in the course of which we'll be composing everything that's going to be part of the work when it hits the stage. For us it's also going to mean returning to the place that first opened its doors to us, sharing this moment with the travelling companions who allowed this work to get off the ground and who co-envisaged its potential.
Define “care” in three words
positioning, intention, not taking things for granted
Marina Donatone (Rome1993) trained at the Budapest Contemporary Dance Academy and followed the work of Laurent Chétouane, Adriana Borriello and Silvia Rampelli.
As a dancer she has worked in Italy and abroad with artists and choreographers including Virgilio Sieni, Jacopo Miliani and Csaba Molnár.
In her work she searches for a body in becoming that gives itself to the choreographic system as an active matter, that works and is worked from the relationships in which it is included, bringing with it its own irreducible composition.
As an author she has created performances for the theatre and for other spaces spaces such as Museo Civico in Bassano del Grappa, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, PAV Parco Arte Vivente, Museo De Felice/CAOS Terni, Panorama Roma/Short Theatre.
In 2019 and 2020 she is part of Boarding Pass Plus Dance, a project supported by the Ministry of Culture for the internationalisation of artists under 35, curated by Short Theatre, CSC - Bassano del Grappa, Lavanderia a Vapore, Terni Festival and Santarcangelo Festival.
She is one of the founders of Jennifer Beals, a many-sided project on performing arts in Rome.