SEEKING UNICORNS – CHIARA BERSANI

SEEKING UNICORN

CHIARA BERSANI (IT)

27 November 2020 21:00

GAM Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea
Blitz Metropolitani via Magenta, 31 Torino

SEEKING UNICORNS. A unicorn, a creature moved by the desire to assert its presence in the world. Chiara Bersani continues her study of the body, keeper of a unique and unrepeatable story. A body that identifies as the perceptual entity of the other as a magnet, influenced by the revolutionary manipulation of distances between individuals. The unicorn is a mythological animal, although it does not have a shape defined in the myths in which it is told: sometimes it has the shape of an ox and sometimes a horse. In Seeking Unicorns the artist wishes to compensate it for the wrongs suffered, giving herself entirely to it. She wants to give him a story, a love, a choice. Welcoming its bewilderment through an idea of ​​a political body, a body that responds to its social function at the very moment in which it chooses to immerse itself in society. Those who meet it cannot avoid giving them meaning, interpreting it, creating expectations around it. Seeking Unicorns also tells of Chiara Bersani’s challenge, her life as a “disabled” performer, but able to give herself completely to her fragile and uprooted imaginary animal. The performance is designed for non-theatrical spaces: empty, full, silent, crowded. Spaces whose light and history ask to be listened to and inhabited. Spaces where the unicorn tries to find itself in a new form, where, by stripping off its best clothes, it renounces the tales of the theater to start a journey of eyes and breaths destined to be different for each audience.

“Nothing is known about the unicorn. Its roots are lost in the succession of distracted genres of human beings. What happens if in the collective imagination will appear a figure with mythological traits yet orphaned by a myth that motivates and describes its existence? Is it born a symbol. Fragile. Uprooted. Chiara Bersani, 98 cm tall, self-proclaims the unicorn’s flesh, muscles and bones. Not knowing its heart, I will try to give it my breath, my eyes.”

Chiara Bersani is an Italian performer and author active in the sphere of Performing Art, research theater and contemporary dance. Both as an interpreter and as a director / choreographer she moves through different languages ​​and visions. Her works, presented on international circuits, are born as creations in dialogue with spaces of different nature and are aimed primarily at an audience “close” to the scene. Her research is based on the concept of the Political Body and on the creation of practices aimed at training its presence and action. The long collaboration with Alessandro Sciarroni (Leone d’Oro 2019) has allowed her great visibility and followed by the public and critics thanks also to the touching performance Your Girl, presented at Interplay in 2009, in which Chiara personified human frailty.
The “manifesto” of his research is Gentle Unicorn, a performance included in the Aerowaves circuit. For the rigor in embodying this studio in 2019 she was awarded with UBU Award for Best New Performer Under 35. In August 2019 during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival Gentle Unicorn won the First Prize for the dance category at the Total Theater Awards.

Directed and performed by Chiara Bersani
Music F. De Isabella
Technical Director Paolo Tizianel
Dramaturgical Consultancy Luca Poncetta
Dramaturg Gaia Clotilde Chernetich
Coach Marta Ciappina
Mentoring Alessandro Sciarroni
External Consultation Marco D’Agostin
Production Organizer Eleonora Cavallo
Promotion Giulia Traversi
Administrative Consulting Chiara Fava
Production Associazione Culturale Corpoceleste_C.C.00# co-production Santarcangelo Festival, CSC – Centro per la Scena Contemporanea (Bassano del Grappa)
Creation made at the artistic residences Centrale FIES (Dro, Trento), Graner (Barcellona), Carrozzerie | N.o.T. (Roma), Gender Bender Festival (Bologna), CapoTrave/Kilowatt (Sansepolcro)

UBU Award in 2019 as Best Performer Under 35
First Prize 2019 at Total Theatre Awards

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