© Giovannfrancesco Giannini, Pietro Bertora
VANITAS
Owing to a reflection on vanitas (Latin for vanity) as an art genre, Giovanfrancesco Giannini, Fabio Novembrini, and Roberta Racis interpret the iconography of vanity as a fundamental ingredient of the crisis of our time. In an imaginary Garden of Eden, archetypal figures lose themselves in the image of their own selves, travelling through gloomy and deviant atmospheres which mark the futility of pleasure and the certainty of death. Violence, death and the ephemeral nature of life and youth are arranged in vivid compositions that emerge from the darkness in the background. The recorded live images are dotted with cut flowers and fruit, candles and hourglasses, which allude to human finitude, to a decaying history and reality. The rhythm with which the still lives are arranged to be exhibited, zoomed in, foregrounded and then rearranged marks a katabasis in which the body itself becomes a thing among other things. Restlessness, crisis of thought, emptiness of meaning: vanity is seen as the law ruling the world. However, in the reminder of death, there is a hymn to life that speaks of an indissoluble duo: there can be no life or possibility of a future without the end of the world as we know it.
Credits
A project by Giovanfrancesco Giannini, Fabio Novembrini, Roberta Racis
Lighting design Valeria Foti
Sound Samuele Cestola
Photo and video Luca Del Pia
Production Körper Centro Nazionale di Produzione della Danza
In co-production with Santarcangelo Festival e Théâtre L’Aire Libre, St Jacques de Lande, Le Joli Collectif
With the support of Primavera dei Teatri, Fattoria Vittadini, Centro di Rilevante Interesse per la Danza Virgilio Sieni, Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Parigi
Vanitas is supported within the R.O.M (Residencies On the Move) network of Théâtre l'Aire Libre - le soli collectif in collaboration with Balsamine (Belgium), Santarcangelo Festival (Italy), Le Grütli (Switzerland), Théâtre Prospero and Teatro Periscopio (Canada). The R.O.M. network is funded by the European Union under the Creative Europe programme.
Giovanfrancesco Giannini, Roberta Racis, Fabio Novembrini
Giovanfrancesco Giannini was born in Naples on November 6, 1990. He currently works with Francesca Foscarini, Alessandro Sciarroni, Cia Aiep Ariella Vidach (Milan), Cie Eco Emilio Calcagno (Paris), Fabbrica Europa (Florence), Cia Korper (Naples). Her performances have been presented at festivals including Santarcangelo festival, FOG Triennale performing arts festival, Fabbrica Europa, Nao performing art festival, CCDC festival Hong Kong, Korperformer, Secret Florence. His work CLOUD was selected for Tanzmesse 2022, Nid Platform 2021, DNAppunti coreografici 2019. His project Memories, in collaboration with artists Fabio Novembrini and Valentina Zappa, is one of the winners of Crossing the sea (Marche Teatro). In 2020, he is one of the Italian artists selected for CRISOL, Bording Pass plus promoted by Mibact. He has danced for Sang Jijia, Dimitris Papaioannou, Stefano Poda, Luca Veggetti, Mathilde Rosier, Dominique Dupuy, Ismael Ivo.
Roberta Racis is an Italian dancer and dance designer. She completed her dance training at the Balletto di Toscana school directed by Cristina Bozzolini. In Lisbon, she worked at CPBC (Companhia Portuguesa de Bailado Contemporaneo) under the direction of Vasco Wallenkamp for the production “Fado” in co-production with Internationaal Danstheater Holland. From 2015 to 2018, she was part of the Italian company Balletto di Roma and danced in productions by several choreographers such as Alessandro Sciarroni, Chris Haring (Liquid Loft), Itamar Serussi Sahar (Batsheva dance company), Paolo Mangiola (Wayne McGregor), Francesca Pennini, Giorgia Nardin. Since 2017, she has been one of five dance creators in the European Performing Gender project promoted by Yorkshire Dance Leeds, City of Women in Ljubljana, Paso a 2 Certamen Coreografico in Madrid, Theaterfestival Boulevard's Hertogenbosch, CSC in Bassano del Grappa and Gender Bender Festival. Since 2018, she has been collaborating with Alessandro Sciarroni on the project Augusto and Turning Orlando's version and with choreographer Masako Matsushita. From 2020, she collaborates with choreographer Enzo Cosimi and is part of the European networking project Danse&Dramaturgie for Théâtre Sevelin 36 in Lausanne, La Bellone Brussels, Bora Bora Aarhus and CSC in Bassano del Grappa. Since 2022, she has collaborated with the duo Igor x Moreno and, as a dance artist, is part of the international project Crisol Creative Processes, in collaboration with the Dance Nucleus Festival in Singapore and Stella&Artists / Macau CDE Springboard Macao.
Fabio Novembrini is a freelance dancer based in Florence. He has collaborated as a dancer and performer for Sang Jijia's production Re-Mark, with the Collettivo Cinetico in the production How to Destroy Your Dance, and with choreographer Masako Matsushita in the production Trusted Devices. In 2022, he was among the selected dance artists for Crisol-Creative Processes, collaborating with the Dance Nucleus Festival in Singapore and with Stella&Arts / Macau CDE Springboard Macao. Since 2019, he has been a founding member, author, and performer of the Mine Collective, whose first work Esercizi per un Manifesto poetico was selected for the NID New Italian Dance Platform 2022 and Aerowaves Twenty22. In 2019, he was one of the winners of the "Crossing The Sea" call, with the project Memories in collaboration with artists Giovanfrancesco Giannini and Valentina Zappa. In 2019, he was the Italian artist chosen for Duetto a tre voci, a research and creation project in partnership between the C.S.C. of Bassano del Grappa and Circuit-Est centre chorégraphique Montréal. For this occasion, he created Archipelago in co-creation with choreographer James Viveiros and dramaturge Ginelle Chagnon. From September 2018 to January 2019, he participated as a performer in the exhibition “The Cleaner” by Marina Abramovic at the Palazzo Strozzi Museum in Florence. In 2018, he created his first solo When I Was in Stockholm with the support of the CSC, Centro per la Scena Contemporanea di Bassano del Grappa and Residenza Artistica C.U.R.A. centro umbro di residenze artistiche / indisciplinarte. In 2017, he became a teacher of Dance Well – movement research for Parkinson’s disease, conceived and activated by the CSC Centro per la Scena Contemporanea in Bassano del Grappa. Previously, he was a dancer with the Balletto di Roma company, directed by Roberto Casarotto, participating in productions by Alessandro Sciarroni, Chris Haring, Itamar Serussi, Francesca Pennini, Giorgia Nardin, and Chiara Frigo. In 2015, he was selected as a dancer-artist for the two-year European research project “Dancing Museums,” performing his own creations in major European museums, including the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in London. That same year, he created his first authorial work with Roberta Racis, Shelter, which was later selected for the 2016 Young Author Dance Showcase of the Anticorpi XL Network.