PERFORMA Training and Performance Creation Project For: actors/actresses, dancers, singers and professional and semi-professional performers Hello, we are Dario and Massimiliano, thank you for your interest in our proposal. If you want to know more about our professional trajectories as performers, teachers and directors at the bottom of this dossier you will find our biographies. Now let's go straight to the heart of the work we propose. The goal of the PERFORMA project is the creation of a performance that will be presented to the public in the performance hall of Spazio Lambrate at the end of a journey that will begin on April 12th and will end on June 29th, 2023. Each working session of the PERFORMA project will be divided into three parts. PART 1: PSYCHO-PHYSICAL TRAINING The psycho-physical training that we propose serves the performer to: ● Get used to getting out of your comfort zone. ● Overcoming resistances and limitations. ● Build self-confidence, starting with the body. ● Knowing how to maintain high levels of attention: the "here and now". ● Do what it does fully and organically. To achieve these results, in training we work on the relationships between: body-mind - "the other" - space, or on what in English is called "Attending From - To - In". Attending FROM: where do I pay attention from? - Feeling kinesthetic and proprioception. - Mechanical VS organic movement. - Peripheral VS movement starting from the center of the body. -Pulses. Attending TO: what or to whom do I pay attention? - Use of central vision. - See VS really look. - Directing attention means directing physical tension. Attending IN: where do I pay attention?- Use of peripheral vision. - Awareness of space in relation to myself and others. Through meticulous work, articulated in a series of exercises / actions, we will help performers to develop their ability to act in a present, full and organic way. The binomial "exercise / action" wants to indicate the double and simultaneous task that is required of the performer working with this artistic practice: the search for precision and athletic repeatability of the exercise and at the same time the constant effort in engaging the imagination and intentions to transform the exercise into a dramatic action that answers the question "what am I doing and why am I doing this thing?". SECOND PART: VOCAL TRAINING With the same rigor and following the same principles that govern our psycho-physical research we will explore together the work on the voice, both spoken and sung. ● The neutral text Working with a repeatable text, a text devoid of meanings, which we could define as "neutral", opens the possibility of investigating the rhythm, the impulse, the resistance of the sound, the difference between spoken text and sung text and the very origins of the sound, without the constraint of a meaning that obliges towards particular interpretations. ● Traditional songs The songs we propose - these are ancient songs, belonging to different traditions - are another type of instrument, or vehicle, to respond to the same need to remain organically rooted in the present that as performers we face both in training and on stage. Thus, singing becomes an essential practice to deepen the same processes that occur during training and the performative act. Processes that concern precisely being present and acting in an organic and living way. THIRD PART: CREATION OF THE PERFORMANCE The main objective of the PERFORMA project is the creation of an original, interesting, structured and lively performance that will be presented to the public at the end of the rehearsal process. ● "Original" The starting point for the development of the creative work will not be a text, a theme, or a pre-established idea, but will be created from scratch by the performers who will participate in the project. Each performer will therefore not only be a performer of the performance, but also an author of the same. ● "Interesting" In the process of creating our performance we will start by asking ourselves - not only as performers, but as human beings - the following question: "what moves me, what is really meaningful to me and has so much value that I feel the need to communicate it to the world?". For each performer the starting point will therefore be individual and personal. The answers you will find to this question will serve as a stimulus throughout the performance creation process. ● "Structured" Starting from this stimulus, each performer will be invited and accompanied to create a short sequence of actions supported by a text, a song, a memory or a precise imagination. These sequences of actions will be our "performative sketches". Considering them in this way will help us not to judge the first results, which are often not those we would like to get at first glance. Next, we will teach you to "calibrate", that is, to correct, delete, modify and add actions to your performative sketch to develop it and obtain a "performative draft": an articulated and detailed structure of actions, but still subject to exploration and calibration. Then, as filmmakers, we will begin to give the performers involved in the creative process working indications that will go in the direction of editing the performative drafts of each one in a collective action. ● "Viva" We will thus go in search of a structure and a story that give coherence to the collective work, but without necessarily following a realistic narrative logic. Rather, we will go in the direction of a poetic language that, being an associative language, allows the creative work of each performer to retro-feed that of others and coexist in a single collective structure of actions. It might seem a paradox, but it is precisely the structure that allows us, as performers, to be able to live fully on stage. Having a repeatable structure of actions means for us to know, moment by moment, what to do and why to do it, which is exactly what in execution leads to feeling truly free and alive on stage. But it's not just about precisely executing the "shape" of our actions. It's more about really paying attention to what we're doing and why, here and now, for the duration of our performance. In other words: the structure of our actions is like the riverbed that allows our life on stage to flow freely. ● Public presentation At this point, at the end of our process of training, creating and editing the performance, we will open the doors of our work to the public. The presentation will take place in the showroom of Spazio Lambrate and will complete our experience as professional performers who complete in a predetermined time a quality work, an original, interesting, structured and lively performance. BIO - DARIO VALTANCOLI Dario Valtancoli, artistic and pedagogical director in various theater centers in Italy and abroad, director and acting teacher by vocation. Valtancoli graduated in Educational Sciences at the University of Bergamo and completed the Master in Psychological Intervention with DBM Methodology at the University of Valencia (Spain). He began his studies as an actor in 1999, in Milan, training with Luca D'Amico on the basis of Orazio Costa's Method. After graduation, between 2001 and 2002, he was part of the "Program for Professional Artists" of Dominique De Fazio, in Rome. Between 2001 and 2009 he continued his training with some great artists directly linked to the work of Jerzy Grotowski, such as Rena Mirecka, Maud Robart, Nhandan Chirco, Gey Pin Ang, Jim Slowiak, Jairo Cuesta and Thomas Richards. Between 2002 and 2009 he worked as an actor in several theater companies internationally. His participation in the team directed by the teacher Gey Pin Ang stands out, with whom Valtancoli creates and presents two performances: "Bird's Inn" and "The Feast of You Shen". Between 2009 and 2011 he founded and directed, in Valencia, the "Laboratorio de Arte en Vivo", a multidisciplinary center for research, training and creation in the field of performing arts. Between 2012 and 2017 she directed the professional training project for actors and actresses "ARTS / Acting Research & Training Studio", in Valencia, Milan and Istanbul. Between 2017 and 2019 Valtancoli gives acting courses and seminars collaborating with important institutions such as the "Unión de Actores" and the "Nave 73", in Madrid. In 2019 Valtancoli directs the new version of the theatrical monologue "No Solo Duelen Los Golpes", by and with Pamela Palenciano, in collaboration with the "Teatro del Barrio" in Madrid, a show seen by more than one million spectators. From 2020 to 2022 Valtancoli founded and directed the "Studio Valtancoli", a training center for professional actors and actresses, in Madrid. Since 2023 Valtancoli is part of the team of "Spazio Lambrate", in Milan, where he works as co-artistic director, pedagogical director, teacher and performer. BIO - MASSIMILIANO BALDUZZI Massimiliano Balduzzi is a performer, actor, director and pedagogue. He graduated in History of Modern and Contemporary Theatre at the University of Bologna and for ten years, under the direction of Stefano Vercelli and Anne Zènour, he dedicated himself to the practice and creation of a rigorous physical and vocal training for actors. With Vercelli he attended the specialization course for actors promoted by Emilia Romagna Teatro, graduating in 2002. In the same year he founded the Teatro della Pioggia in Siena with Zenour and for five years he dedicated himself daily to the creation of a physical and vocal training that became the basis for all subsequent performative research. During the Tuscan years he began to transmit the principles of his research through weekly workshops and intensive seminars and co-directed for two years the Festival Finoallafinedelmondo. In 2006 Balduzzi lived in Ubud-Bali for six months where she studied traditional dance and singing with the masters I Made Bukel and I Nyoman Tchandri. In 2008 he moved to New York to continue his research in the field of contemporary performance. For three years he collaborated with Ben Spatz and the company Urban Research. In the American years he worked as a performer, among others, for James Scruggs, Helga Davis, Arturo Vidich, Daria Fain and Robert Kocik, Anna Azrieli, Vanessa Anspaugh, Kora Radella and Matty Davis, Denisa Musilova. Since 2011 he has undertaken a solo research through artistic residencies offered by Movement Research, CAVE black studio and Fresh Tracks of New York Live Arts. Over the next four years he presented six different studios in collaboration with playwright Susan Mar Landau in the spaces of Judson Church, New York Live Arts, Danspace, Rubin Museum and Cave. In the same years he began to travel again and presented his work at the FringeArts in Philadelphia, at the Pieter in Los Angeles and later in Italy, England and Mexico. In 2018 he re-established himself in Italy. In June of the same year he presented the solo Lunatico a Tropici, curated by Michele di Stefano, to resume it in October 2019 at the Tendance Festival in Latina. In 2018/19 he worked as a performer in Augusto by Alessandro Sciarroni which debuted at the Lyon Biennale and continued with a rich European tour. In March 2019 she is on stage in Prague in Fitting Rooms by Denisa Musilova. Balduzzi has conducted numerous master classes and seminars in some of the most important American colleges (Cuny College, , Emerson College, University of the Arts of Philadelphia, Swarthmore Colege, Amherst College and Colby College). His pedagogical activity has also led him to work in France, England, Spain, Czech Republic and Mexico. INFORMAZIONI PERFORMA - Training and Performative Creation Project Conducted by @dario.valtancoli and @massimilianobalduzzi Days and times Every Wednesday and Thursday, from 10 am to 2 pm Start date: Wednesday, 12 April 2023 Performance presentation date: Thursday 29 June 2023 There will also be two intensive work sessions on weekends 17/18 and 24/25 June, from 10 am to 6 pm April Calendar (from 10 am to 2 pm): 12 - 13 - 19 - 20 - 26 - 27 April MAY (from 10 am to 2 pm): 3 - 4 - 10 - 11 - 17 - 18 - 23 - 24 - 31 JUNE (from 10 am to 2 pm): 1 - 7 - 8 - 14 - 15 - 21 - 22 Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 (from 10 am to 6 pm) Saturday 24 and Sunday 25 (from 10 am to 6 pm) 28 June (from 10 am to 2 pm - dress rehearsal) June 29 (public presentation) Total hours: 112