Marco Berrettini iFeel2

The setting is an artificial garden, resembling a bluish, psychedelic Eden in which a half-man half-bush vegetates and strums electro-hypnotic guitar chords. A man and a woman, both bare-chested and in tight jeans, engage in a fusional duo at opposite ends of the stage. Are these intense, abstract figures, as primitive as they are rock’n’roll, Marco Berettini and Marie-Caroline Hominal’s incarnation of a set idea of Desire? Are they a fantastical vision of Infinity? Or a disturbing glimpse of Alterity? In any case, the elegant trance they trace out is done so according to a minimalist and repetitive structure based on the residue of social dances, which are then mirrored. The choreography is of a sophisticated nature stemming from raw movements, and remind us of Marco Berettini’s interest in ethnology and anthropology, subjects that he studied at the University of Frankfurt in parallel with his unique journey as an artist. A former student of Pina Bausch, this German choreographer of Italian extraction, now living in Switzerland, was the German disco-dancing ex-champion at the age of 15 years old, and is the author of pieces endowed with ever so slightly corny titles, such as Père Noël lubrique and Sturmwetter prépare l’an d’Emil (Emil Sturmwetter was his fictional double). In iFeel2, he reveals his talents as choreographer and performer but also as a musician, with his group, Summer Music, providing us with the sound landscape for this existential trip.