For Performing Landscapes Elisa Zuppini creates a piece for the student of 3rd year Expanded Contemporary Dance in Amsterdam. The project is a collaboration between the Academy and WhyNot Festival.
Concept and choreography | Elisa Zuppini
Sound | Oceanic
Performers | Salya Berraf, Wan-Yu Chen, Elias Clark, Eivinas Dziena, Hannah Fernandes Badura, Alberte Buch GØbel, Balder StuestØl Hansen, Dovile Krutulyte,
Ummi Renteria Wouters, Ana Margaride Tasso de Sousa, Erikas Žilaitis, Meriç Tuncer, Swali Mazzaggio, Alina Lugovskaya, Johan Hogsten, Ida Vu.
Produced by | ECD Expanded Contemporary Dance Amsterdam (NL)
Synthetic Disjunctions is a piece created both for the theater and for the white box. During 2020 it was also presented in two site specific spaces during the Festival Antidote 1on1, where one audience member at the time was invited to watch the performance. An initiative undertaken under the pandemic Covid19.
It was presented at: NDSM Amsterdam and Kunstlicht Amsterdam Noord.
Performance and Choreography | Elisa Zuppini
Photo credit | Jesse Vanhoek, Ines Agnese
Supported by Dansmakers Amsterdam and ICK Amsterdam Dance Company
In Synthetic Disjunctions the maker and solo performer Elisa Zuppini explores dance as a visual and textural manifestation. She utilizes her body to encapsulate the experience of dancing into forms as 'abstract objects'. Aware that this very experience is irrepressible, she enlightens the excess that remains uncontainable.
- We have to figure out the body as a texture in space, heavy and dense material that creates new gravitational forces -
Constantly operating through a friction between withhold and manifestation, Zuppini gives life to a series of embodied forms like living objects. Something eerie is activated in space and an irregular architecture unfolds by default as a result of internal relational logic.
Synthetic Disjunctions is a piece in development that Elisa started working on during the pandemic at New Adventures, a residency supported by Ick Amsterdam and Dansmakers.
Concept and choreography by Elisa Zuppini
Object by Sajoscha Talirz
Dramaturg Bruno Listopad
Photo credit | Thomas Lenden
In Himalaya, choreographer Elisa Zuppini continues her research into the material and affective dimensions of the body and the understanding of reality as a complex entanglement of relational systems.
This time she does so by drawing inspiration from contrasting elements: she thinks of the extemporaneous and textural features of the geological realm, the fragmented temporalities of the digital space and the repetition and obsessiveness of mechanic bodies. In Himalaya she explores the clash between these systems, as if they were moving tectonics that collide but do not completely fit with each other. This can be seen as a metaphor for how these systems possibly operate in our perception: disjointed, related, forced and unsettled.
In this work Zuppini researches about the manifestation of these clashes both in the choreography and in the body itself. A body that constantly strives to exceed its inner and outer spaces.
In collaboration with producer and DJ James Whipple (M.E.S.H), these ideas are explored in a constant relationship between sound and movement. Whipple's sound interventions, sourced from both the geological and the synthetic, act as splinters and tectonic waves, encountering the body, reflecting off of it, or bypassing it completely. As sound and body continuously align and diverge, the attention of the audience oscillates between a focused center and a larger field of resonance.
Concept and Choreography | Elisa Zuppini
Performer | Federica Dalla Pozza
Live sound | M.E.S.H. (James Whipple)
Dramaturg | Bruno Listopad
Production assistance | Michael Scerbo, Ludovica Daddi
Camera and editing | Saskia Habermann, Paulina Prokop
Previous Outfit | Avoidstreet (Eduardo Leon)
Photo credit | Alwin Poiana
Produced and supported by ICK Amsterdam, AFK, CC Heidelberg
The piece was presented at:
FAROUT Festival, BASE Milano, October 2023
Feeling Curious? Festival at Theatre Rotterdam, October 2023
Danza Urbana, Bologna, September 2023
Synergy Festival, June 2023
Tanzbiennale Heidelberg, July 2021
Julidans Off Venue, Amsterdam July 2021
Theater de Meervaart, October 2019
BODY drop event, October 2019 (Try out)
Antidote Festival, June 2019 (Try out)
Transmaterial 0X2 was developed as the third of a trilogy, following Transmaterial and LIIL, two piece created for the theater and with an idiosyncratic movement quality and aesthetics that mainly sees the body reorganizing around the asses of the knees. The piece was directly influenced from those and further developed for underground club spaces with experimental electronic music.
The two bodies appear in the midst of the public, as two entities rising from the forces of the space itself. Forceful and dis/organic, the bodies plunge in sound and disrupt the flow of the event.
The piece was first presented in clubs, it was then invited to be presented in different contexts: galleries, museums, magazine events and academic lectures.
Choreography | Elisa Zuppini
Performance | Federica Dalla Pozza, Elisa Zuppini
Outfits | Eduardo Leon
Performed at Subbuculctha Horses in the void, De Apple, Van Gogh Museum, Het Heem x HardHoof anniversary, Art et Amicitiae Global Warm up, Body DROP x ADE, Groningen Friday Night - Netherlands 2019
Photo credits | Juliette Lizotte, Giovanni Giaretta
STRAXXE (cloth in Venetian dialect) is a site specific performance created for The Picnic Pavillon at Casa Punto Croce, located in Venice. The event take place during the opening of Biennale di Venezia as a counterforce from venetian artists against the art consumerism that the city undergoes in that period.
In Straxxe the performer Federica Dalla Pozza becomes a machine sensor of space that reacts and relate to everything she encounters, transforming accordingly.
The body is a program for outdoor and indoor space consumption, an hypersensitive machinic flash that register her sensory environment, while experiencing and digesting it, she creates new outputs.
Moving from the open space of the small square in front and entering inside in the historical house, she disrupt the public space, magnetize people inside, become part of the furniture and eventually gets activated again when the music starts to play during the night, disturbing and disrupting the social activitities.
Transmaterial is a meta-organic and multi-directional space where you can slime or get stuck, dissolve, elevate and dance.
Transmaterial explore a self choreographic system where the material and affective relation in between bodies, body parts and the body of the audience, construct and unfold the event every time differently.
Concept | Elisa Zuppini
Performers | Tamir Eting, Gerko Farkas, Federica Dalla Pozza, Elisa Zuppini
Avisor | Bruno Listopad
Photo credits | Nellie de Boer
Produced by SNDO School for New Dance Development (Graduation Festival)
LIIL presents an unfolding reality of transformative bodies. By entering a hypersensitive state of perception, the performers sense themselves and the space between the fictional and the actual: the body as a decentralized system of embodying force, place as an ever-moving site, the skin as a giant landscape, materiality in constant re-organization and the gravity as a re-configurable force.
By allowing micro and macro elements to enter into relational movement, a system of systems is initiated generating unpredictable, fragmented and oblique (mis)alignments through the sensory chaos. The body experiences itself as a materiality that transforms irregularly in time, while the viewer is invited to slip between different dimensions of materiality.
LIIL is a culmination of various elements of Zuppini’s artistic research, inspired by an unceasing quest for the complexity of the invisible forces that constantly habit and encounter the bodies.
Review of LIIL by philosopher and critic Samo Oleami, at Spider Festival 2018, Lubljiana (SL)
Concept and Choreogrphy | Elisa Zuppini
Performers | Federica Dalla Pozza, Elisa Zuppini
Soundtrack and mix | Elisa Zuppini
Sound advisor and design | Elisa Battistutta
Dramaturgical advisors | Renèe Copraji and Nikola Knevic
Light design | Marteen
Photo credits | Matjias Luckic, Nellie De Boer
Produced by SNDO School for New Dance Development
Fontana dei movimenti is a piece at the threeshold of both sci-fi and ballet genre. From unity to shape, to separations, the work aims to search for the source of movement from which form can rise.
The project was a collaboration in between SNDO choreography department and MTD dance department at Theaterschool in Amsterdam.
Concet and Choreography | Elisa Zuppini
Performers | Ana, Andrei, Christian, Diana, Evgenia, Pilvi
Advisor | Michele Rizzo
Produced by SNDO and presented at Veem House for Performance, Amsterdam 2017
Singularities on the Edges of Nowhere is a piece created from the event, an intra-action between the choreographer and the 9 dancers.
Commissioned by Open Flr and presented at Villa Strozzi in Florence (IT) in the summer of 2016.
Elisa was awarded by Opne Flr as young talent in choreography 2016.
Concept and Choreography | Elisa Zuppini
Performers | Casey Brown, Dixon Li, Kimberley Lippe, Claire Laske, Abigail Santana Medina, Emmanuel Ponce Martinez, Isaias Fitch Vegas, Noemi Sanchez Cardenas, Brenna Nopenz
Photo credits | Valeria Cosi
Might be dancing / manifested perception is a manifesto for dancing. Three performers from diverse backgrounds, encounter in an swirling dance in which their qualities get to mix. With contamination from Ballet, House and Russian dance they meet to give life to a contemporary dancing: a dance of network, speed connection and disorganized identities.
Treating the body of the performers as an archive and working the movement from an idea of vectorial forces, the qualities get queered and extended from the bodies into the whirling chaos of the piece. The work thus builds on shifting intensities, always resisting to the verge of collapse.
Concept and Choreography | Elisa Zuppini
Performers | Mami Kang, Imola Nagi, Alexey Shcolnik
Advisor | Matej Kejizar
Mentor | Bruno Listopad
Sound mix | Elisa Zuppini
Light design | Pedro Correia
Photo credits | Nellie de Boer, Anne Smeets
produced by SNDO school for new dance development
Elisa had a wonderful approach to the assignment and a great work attitude. She made a performance that seems to derive out of a curiosity about how her own perception is wired, engineered, distributed, and reconfigured when opening herself and entering in conscious relation with the materials of the world, either virtual or actual.
This bold work has been obviously very fruitful to her development as a choreographer but also to her dancers and the development of the discipline itself, but not solely -- I will attempt to touch upon that later on.
Yet why is Might be dancing / manifested perception research so valuable?
Because this contributes to the revaluation of movement into performing arts after this has been partly marginalized in many reflexive choreographic circles as merely redundant. Coincidently she does so after movement has been intensely valued in affect and activist philosophy. She does not do such out of disciplinary essentialism, or a sort of modernist revivalism. On the contrary, she looks upon this through the lens of hybridism and as a relational technology that operates continuously beyond and through a logic of representation. She diagnoses movement by hypersensitizing herself to the sensation as the object itself.
Practically speaking, Elisa worked intensely on drafting and reconfiguring diverse types of scores that activated bodies into unpredictable and fragmentary responses. She did so by attentively examining her performers in relation to herself, the site as a moving environment, and by queering their own movement recollections, and projections. But also by being sensitive to non-human factors -- light and sound were also perceived as vectorial agents -- choreographic objects that incited performers and the public to experience sensation as abstraction.
Elisa´s choreography demonstrates that nothing is static and all is dynamic. Yet how could she manage to create a work that stands in its own legs out of an overwhelming field of moving potential? By building hierarchies through scores that filter the chaos of the world into a provisional sense order threaten by collapse, by subtracting and composing away some parts, and juxtaposing others through counterpoints that build new hierarchies out of the old. By deliberately manipulating synchronous registers, modalities of attention, the embodied collective cultural memories of her performers and by puzzling these within a whole always at the verge of being subsumed by chaos.
She researched movement constructively through the making of a choreographic monument dispossessed of the pathos of the monumental. Yet why call it a monument then? Because the compositional compound could stand up firmly under a tensed precarious balance producing an event.
All in all, Elisa worked devoted, perhaps passionately would be a more accurate term. She remained empirical just like an engineer or even a scientist analyzing lived movement and relation as the only reality. She has undoubtedly developed terrific and highly empirical research important for her, but also to the revaluation and better comprehension of movement in our lives. This is the site in which I perceive her operating, but of course, perception is not objective as this is relational movement too. The only thing we can be sure to ever know is relation itself.
Bruno Listopad (2016)
In collaboration with Michael Scerbo
Movement is inescapable. During the dancing plague the body took over; the control exercised by the mind was overthrown, and an incessant movement took centre stage. A somatic condition echoing the Bacchanalia where the genderfluid deity, Dionysus, was celebrated by reaching a state of ecstatic frenzy through dance and intoxication. Resounding, in turn, in a more contemporary ritual: the rave. The body therefore becomes a channel of all those forces which are constantly around us, soaking them up, and opening up to a continuum of intensity and affect.
Moving on the echo of these events, performance collaborators Michael Scerbo and Elisa Zuppini import the sequential alchemy of the club into the space of the gallery, experimenting with what substances, dance and environments can do to bodies’ sensory systems and what kinds of kinetic activity and relationality–physical, affective, psychic, architectural–these shifts produce, especially in the aftermath of the recent forceful halt. How can we host movement again?
Intoxication, as a form of a public program to the exhibition and para-ritual, weaves together different formats (sensorial lecture-performance, workshop, performative act) offering a multi-sensorial journey into different worlds and temporalities.
Bergamo, March 2022 (IT)
CREDITS
Concept and Performance: Michael Scerbo & Elisa Zuppini
Intoxication, Acidity, Compression, 2022
Choreographic score: Elisa Zuppini
Performed by: Federica Dalla Pozza
Sound design: Katatonic Silentio
Pants: AVOIDSTREET
Dancing Plague is an exhibition curated by Panos Giannikopolous
GAMeC, May 2022
Foto: Antonio Maniscalco, Elisa Zuppini
Courtesy GAMeC - Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo
In collaboration with Nica X Festival Why not
In the frame of Landscaping, organized by Whynot Festival, 10 artists come together to create a performance on the topic 'Body and Landscape'. In collaboration with Nica, Elisa Zuppini creates her contribution.
.. somewhere trying to de-romanticize nature but after all ending up in a romantic tension with the nature of reality 〰️ reckless bodies ➰ synthetic despair ➿ emotional sculptures 🥀
By Elisa Zuppini and Nica
Idea & Production: WhyNot (Daisy Benz & Marjolein Vogels)
Concept: Job Oberman, Theun Mosk, Dario Tortorelli, Elisa Zuppini & Nica Roses
Choreography: Dario Tortorelli, Elisa Zuppini&Nica
Sound Installation & Music Composition: Job Oberman (Oceanic)
Scenography: Theun Mosk
Landscape Architect: Anna Maria Fink
Publication: Daphne Bakker
Publicity & Production Assistant: Vera Goetzee
Photo credites: Nick Chesnaye
A collaboration with Christopher Tym
In their first experiment together choreographer Elisa Zuppini and visual artist Christopher Tym investigate the relation between a body and a camera in motion.
As these two bodies amplify and inform each other’s movements, they begin to produce an altered sense of a moving environment between them, something beyond representation of the human body and its surroundings - they become extensions of each other. There’s a sense of free fall in this relationship, there is no up or down and that all movement has the potential to be destabilized and reoriented in multiple directions simultaneously.
The body sees the camera, the camera sees the body.
What is inside the frame dances together
The short film premiered at Cinedans Dance Film Festival in March 2021, Amsterdam
Choreographer | Elisa Zuppini
Visual artist | Christopher Tym
A collaboration initiated by Jacuzzi and supported by Mondrian Fonds. Filmed in Ascoli Piceno.
A collaboration with Koen Bartijn
In Bare Time three performers inhabit the space of the gallery. The daily activities of practicing, dancing, and resting are performed within the space. Looped, these activities succumb to a bare choreographed pattern in which nothing new seems to enter. At the same time, the shared space in which they’re performed provides the potential for micro-events to influence the flow, creating raptures in the routines and emancipating them. While their times and activities are partitioned, there is a constant search for a common time.
Concept | Koen Bartijn
Choreography | Elisa Zuppini
Performance | Federica Dalla Pozza, Doke Pawels, Elisa Zuppini
A collaboration with Lavinia Rossetti at Antwerp Academy for Fine Arts
What is the role of the body in relation to jewelry? Which sensations can jewelry provoke to the body and how can those change or affect the self-awareness of the wearer?
The conversation between jewelry maker Lavinia Rossetti and choreographer Elisa Zuppini started from general reflections about the relation between body and jewelry. Their research has been developed by observing the experiential state of the performer when entering in a relationship with diverse types of objects and materials, while also looking at their responses. To be able to observe this relationship they created a system composed of steel springs and magnets. The magnets are arranged in space and on the body, while the springs are partially or totally free between the body and the magnets.
In a nutshell, the body, springs and magnets create a relational cluster. The body engages in this relation through de.sy.re, a movement system developed by Elisa Zuppini which functions through logic of sensations and where the body is considered as an hypersensitive subject. As the body reorients itself, springs and magnets enact their response. This ever-moving and sensorial system generates constant shapes in transit, changing and reshaping, exploring questions about wearability and design within the field of jewelry.
The result of this crossed investigation between their practices aims to propose an analysis of body and jewellery as a relational system where both subject and object are considered active agents for each other.
The outcome of this research have the form of a video that will be presented at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, during Body and Material Reinvented open weeks. October 2021.
Photo credit | Lucy Plato
Video editing and camera | Paulina Prokop
Why does it feel so exciting and important to dance together, and what is really happening when we do that? In this conversation, dancers, DJ’s and artists will share thoughts about their practices and discuss the ways in which dancing becomes a potentially subversive act. How might the processes of movement - of bodies, attention and perception - reflect and re-invigorate processes of change and transformation in personal, social and political realms?
Curation | Noha Ramadan and Elisa Zuppini
Performances by Isadora Tomasi, Setareh Fatehi, Elisa Zuppini
DJs | Nocturnal Femme, Fatima Ferrari, Ziur
Production | ICK Amsterdam Dance company and ADE Amsterdam Dance Event
ARTISTIC RESIDENCIES, CAMPUS
JUN 15, 2023
Elisa Zuppini
Macro Architectures
Massive virtual structures emerge in space, transforming and vanishing, surrounding the body. Architectures-of-feeling, generated by sensual suspensions, are organized by possibly unthinkable geometries through force fields. Nearly unrepeatable, they rise and envelop themselves in space, as if independent forces superimposed on the actual site. They produce synthetic realities that each body differently reengineers by itself. The actual space and the one of the mind merge into an indissoluble whole, yet almost provisional. In this sense, these subjective spaces appear to be extensions of individuals’ sense-perceptions, granting the subject the possibility of reorganizing their sense of “self” or “selves”. Technologies with which the body is endowed, but that are simultaneously autonomous from this, as if they were mere instruments, albeit the resulting sensations by these generated.
A rose, enwrapped by a transparent membrane that is also time. The background is that of a common office-like-milkwhite-shelf and a desk. The focus is on the rose. Time (the transparent membrane), ripples and crinkles like plastic on fire as if disappearing into nothing.
The expanse of the mind, once partly reengineered, motions forward through abstract thinking. Lately, I have been reflecting on architecture as the ultimate structural manifestation of reality, and in the relation between spatiality and cognition. The mind being the producer of images - but also responsible for how these become animated, in what seems to be a non-human sense of time and extension - subjectively shapes the ways of meeting “oneself” through internal or external forms.
Remains interesting the relationship between projecting and designing. Particularly, how design can be a “technology of the self”[1] or “selves,” with which, the subjects can reconfigure themselves and their environment. Consider a free fall or being immersed in a water pool. Now, look at the furthest point from you; punto di fuga. Visualize the vectors surrounding your body running to that point and beyond it, to a space you weren’t able to see and a time you were not able, at least not yet, to know; viaggia nel tempo. It’s through this virtual, but gravitational space, that one can start to envision.
Mass and Abstract Objects
Not only through multilayered outlines, but also through their distributed intentions, architectures themselves become tangibles vectors of construction that model a mass-object producer of other mass-objects, while involving the body in an ambiguous, and perpetual entangled relationship between being a creator and being nothing. These architectures disintegrate, collapse upon themselves, through their own meaning gap. Undisclosed forces are the ones that shape abstract objects. I understand these to be objects of thought, objects of the mind.
An object is an entity that one can seemingly possess, but it is also a document, a file, that one can revisit when it has been recorded. A concept, like a sensation that crystallizes, once recognized for us as such, tends to become an object that defines itself by the act of definition, just as a form that settles on a flow of continuous movement, one that seemingly fixed, expands. Motion and stillness in thiscoexist, albeit the object belongs to the quality of immobility, while everything else keeps moving nearly all the time. The object, as a conceptual construct, establishes our cognitive sphere.
Structures made and unmade, majestically, dizzyingly, appear recursively. New constructions and new heights, a painting on the ceiling of an old church, repeated into sameness, in a series, portraying Christ, or at any rate a Christian figure, resembles a surface floating with religious content. Emerging lineaments from the force field color the world of introspection. Micro scissoring sensus, between what we visualize, and how we move, but also between what we build and how we hold our breath.
Exteriorized Introspection: extended previously, internal structures of feelings. Miniatures and Self Disciplines (postures of the subject)
You may wonder how macro architectures refract through the sensing subject into miniatures. That I can’t tell. But I know that the macrostructures are inhabited by minor architectures and incomplete objects. These are produced from within. Their mechanics are quantum-like and therefore act as if seemingly incomprehensible. Occasionally, these fragment into small yet extended superimposed landscapes that are alternated by boundless voids. The futural aesthetics by these evoked deliver a sense of unity, even if provisional. The actual space and the one of the mind merge once again, into an almost indissoluble whole, yet, again this collapses and refracts into infinitely self-shaping, quasi-like sculptures, mere stuff, and tiny things.
Pouring in abundance, the reiterated minute thoughts divided and looped remain in the background. Occasionally, these behave as ornaments, details, that sit next to a unified sense of being. Other times, these act like decentered protagonists or an anarchic mass of bacteria, while feelings themselves, locked behind such thoughts, leak through as rarefactive golden liquid.
Vision: Post-Architecture and Aesthetic Core
Architectures and tangled furniture collapsing upon themselves, coiling up into ones that arise anew, but now more as archetypical symbols than objects. These are symbol-objects that extend into space. Their external anatomy is internalized. These become observable at their most aesthetic core, and even when these are rendered explicit and behave as if remaining inaccessible, they are not devoid of an aesthetic interiority.
Complete or partial darkness, absolute abstraction, crashing thoughts, floating mental objects. For fractions of seconds, we seem to experience the most condensed entropy. The bodies’internal space expands externally like an ocean wave that starts retracting swallowing back, that what belongs to an outside. Each item becomes part of the internal chaos, implosion, or even death, but also, nonsense, even if for just an instant of its prolonged lucidity. Yet, through such mayhem, almost reassuringly, a clear dense, plutonic, cold, and metallic mass, one that we are well familiar with, occurs within us.
- - -
For you, the audience out there, come with me. I will guide you through space within my body, through my attention. I will bring you to the space of vision. I appeal to you to construct your own. What is this? How does this work? Trust the darkness that rests behind your eyes. We partake in the same delirium, in the thought of space itself. Yet, our bodies, erotic manifestations, are the very phenomenon of intention and movement. We are the intention that we are moved by. I also move you through my intention. We contemplate a form, the same form. But how do you feel within this form? How does this form feel? How does this form feel itself and feel you? How does this suggest other forms? How do these other forms feel themselves? Microgrid, sensory fabric, abstract mediation. I project into space, shaping a new sense of space. Metal object, mental object. Projection of the mind, the way, it isn't of the mind, the how this glides, cuts through, sharp.
1. Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. University of Massachusetts Press. This book is a collection of lectures delivered by Foucault at the University of Vermont in 1982. It provides a comprehensive exploration of the concept of technologies of the self.
Written by Elisa Zuppini © Author editing by Bruno Listopad
Monday, May 22, 2023
Written by Elisa Zuppini (2018)
Vertigo is an intensified relational field ruled by sensations, where the usual distribution of senses is displaced and wired. Its components, actual and virtual (human and non-human), are hypersensitive matter that enter in significant affective relations, generating unpredictable, fragmented and obliques mis/alignments through the sensory chaos.
Everything is matter. Everything senses everything, therefore everything is potentially in relation.
However the elements enjoy independent ownership and features and they distribute their relationships through selective sensory attention. Nevertheless, in turn, each element is considered as a porous mass of independent entities (open by thresholds in its precarious boundaries) that can agglomerate and reshape, functioning as a system where the will is entangled and complicated.They can get involved in relations in its totality as well partially, triggering infinite possibilities of relational movement. So doing, as well their features/materiality can potentially mix or even dissolve in the swirl.
The elements mutually function as performers, events, agents and attractors for each other, even for themselves (being self-related systems). Enjoying specific characteristics of its being a system (system of being a plastic cube, human matter, a virtual force, audience etc.) they have different and limited range of possibility and features of: materiality, movement and aesthetic. When entering in a relation with each other this range augment and stretches, transforming the way they behave and of how, themselves and we, perceive them.The re-orientation of each component, in the actual and abstract spatial dimension, is therefore destabilized. They are pushed to experience the vertiginous and to constantly re-align and recompose in unpredictable modality in order to filter the chaos and to resist to the verge of collapse. (Is important to already point out that this extend to the audience as an element in itself).
The idea is obviously not literal, the creation activates through imaging, sensing and visualizing as main practices. However we can say that those operations are material too.When speaking of the human body this course is more easily detectable and me, as the maker, can analyze the process in relation to my own body.But how this apply to non-human elements and even to the abstract ones? How do matter feels and move? How can we feel matter feeling?
In my work I try to create conditions and space for this unknown (to us) to manifest. In the role of maker I put myself as well in an hypersensitive state towards the elements. By observing their features and selecting the involved material, I allow a sort of collaborative creation. Also, by crafting and scoring certain part, juxtaposing and cutting away others, I leave wide but defined space/time where those relations can just exist, transform each other and transform the experience of the audience.
Not all the relations actualize, would be impossible. Moreover this is fundamental in order to make the space thick of potential, awaking a sense of desire. At the same time the relations will always overlap (in different intensity through the piece). The audience will be challenged to design its own experience, as well to operate a selection through their sensitive attention.
The final aim is not to show how the relation works. On the contrary I am interested in how all this manifest in an event, affecting the audience, making it feel part of it. Leading it in a vortex where sensations triumph, possibly, beyond language.
Written by Elisa Zuppini (through 2018-2020)
De.sy.re. (decentralized systems of relation) is a relational technology for performative bodies that operates in between actual and virtual, human and non-human elements.
The technology is based on the principle of decentralization, on moving attention in between points/zones. By decentralizing we activate relations, we shift and move attention, we observe and feel the space in between those zones. It functions through logics of sensation and features the body as a vibrant and transformative material interface, a decentralized system of embodying forces. An hypersensitive and multi-sensory tool for direct experience of its environment which in turn is active and ever moving.
De.sy.re. operates through an idea of space such as relational fields, where all the elements mutually function as performers, events, agents and attractors for each other, even for themselves (being self-related systems). By allowing micro and macro elements to enter into a relational movement a system of systems is initiated, generating unpredictable, fragmented and oblique (mis)alignments through the sensory chaos.
The practice thus builds on layered systems of relations of which the outcome is only partially controllable. In order to free the motion the system constantly requires to be bent, to shift hierarchies in the prioritization of relation, to re-configure in form and function and to feature every relation as unique. The technology brings together a multiplicity of movement systems that are not necessarily consistent with each other. In this sense the technology is in constant movement as well. It is not based on dogmatism but, by its very nature, on the constant transformation and re-understanding of its principals. The only principle that does not change is that of relation, even if it means non-relation. There is always more than one, even if the object in question is the body itself. At the same time it does not reject unity.
De.sy.re. is a practice that questions movement and body though material and virtual lents. Through the technology I attempt to rethink dance from a non anthropocentric vision; movement, activation and orientation as a product of re-configurable systems of forces where the entanglement with diverse types of elements comes to be fundamental. It can be seen as a dance-performative (or even choreographic) practice but also as a tool for everyday life: for orienting and relating and for opening our perceptual understanding to our environment. To filter, block or absorb information, to creatively engage with our material body and to subvert micro power structure.
With her research, De.sy.re Elisa is frequently invited to give workshops and teach in various contexts and academies across different fields, including dance, choreography, visual arts, and research groups. Elisa perceives the space of the workshop as an oscillation, a movement that cracks open a temporal and spacial frame of exchange - while offering as a ground the principals of her practice and research. Those being being principals revolving around around concepts that delve into the affective dimensions of the body, materiality the understanding of movement in its entirety, considering its relationship with various disciplines and spaces. Consequently, she consistently adapts the structure of her workshops to align with the specific needs of diverse fields, geographic locations, subjectivities, and discourses that interweave in these contexts.
Her objectives encompass fostering relational movement, attunement, exploring materiality, delving into micro and macro subjectivities, and harnessing sensations as reconfigurable forces. To achieve these goals, Elisa employs a range of teaching technologies, including task-based exercises, somatic practices, engaging conversations, the use of videos, abstract visual stimuli, and sound as abstract mediations.
Elisa has shared her expertise and conducted workshops at institutions such as, SNDO - School for New Dance Development, Rietveld Academy, ECD Expanded Contemporary Dance, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Artez Aki, OHT Nomadic School in The Alps, Campus Choreographic Center in Porto, Faiic - professional course in interpretation and choreography, DT Danseteater Copenaghen, University of Pennsylvania, among others.
Elisa Zuppini (IT/NL) is a dancer and choreographer. She graduated in 2018 from the Amsterdam based academy in choreography SNDO - School for New Dance Development. Her dance background includes the study of classical, modern, and contemporary dance that she attained in Italy, Portugal, and the Netherlands. Driven by the philosophical and artistic generation of dance, she became interested in performance and choreography as expanded ways of understanding movement. She currently operates at the intersection of dance and visual arts, using choreographic devices as if they were temporal sculptures.
She won the Young Talent Choreography Award at OpenFLR 2016. In 2018, she received a scholarship to participate in Danceweb Longlife Burning in Vienna. She completed residencies at CAMPUS choreographic center, Veem House for Performance, FLAM Festival, CC-Heidelberg, ICK Dans Amsterdam, Ricerca X in Turin, and won the research grant Bodyscapes, among others.
She has presented her work at Theatre Rotterdam, Tanzbiennale Heidelberg, GAMeC Gallery for Contemporary Art, Veem House for Performance, the Van Gogh Museum, W139, Frascati Amsterdam, Theatre de Meer Vaart, BASE Milano, Danza Urbana, Villa Strozzi, among others; she created commissioned work for Expanded Contemporary Dance academy, for the exhibition Dancing Plague curated by Panos Giannikopolis, as well as for the Amsterdam-based platform WhyNot.
As an educator, mentor and artistic advisor, she has worked at SNDO - School for New Dance Development, Rietveld Academy, ECD Expanded Contemporary Dance, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Artez Aki, OHT Nomadic School in The Alps, Campus choreographic center in Porto, Faiic - professional course in interpretation and choreography, DT Danseteater Copenaghen and the University of Pennsylvania.
Over the years, her practice has become a fertile ground for collaborations and interdisciplinary projects. She collaborated with the artist Lavinia Rossetti at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts on the performative jewelry research project from 2018 to 2020. She led with artist and scholar Dahlia Lì workshops at the University of Pennsylvania in New York.
Between 2019 and 2023 she created the work "Himalaya'', a long time research work made in collaboration with renown musician M.E.S.H, between 2019 and 2023.
Since 2019 she is part of Jacuzzi, a convergence of Amsterdam-based choreographers, and since 2018, she has been collaborating regularly with the artist and dramaturg Bruno Listopad.
Elisa Zuppini - Dance, Choreography & Performance
1990 Ascoli Piceno (IT)
Lives and works in Amsterdam (NL)
Current member of Jacuzzi, Amsterdam
Education
> EMC Electronic Music Course
Sae, Amsterdam (NL) 2019
> SNDO Bachelor in Choreography
Theaterschool, Amsterdam (NL) 2014 - 2018
> FAICC Professional Formation in Choreography and Performance
Teatro Campo Alegre, Porto (PT) 2014
> Professional Formation in Contemporary Dance, Ballet and Performance
Italy, Austria, France, Belgium, Turkey 1997 - 2013
Own works + performer in her own works
> Performing Landscapes, with 16 dancers from the program Expanded Contemporary Dance, Amsterdam (NL) 2022
> Synthetic disjunctions (work-in-progress), first presented at Dansmakers New Adventures, August 2020, Amsterdam (NL).
Performed by Elisa Zuppini
> Himalaya, with composer M.E.S.H. premiere at Theater de Meervaart, October 2019, Amsterdam (NL)
Performed by Federica Dalla Pozza
> STRAXXE site specific performance, at Picnic Pavillon in Venice (IT), May 2019
Performed by Federica Dalla Pozza
> Transmaterial 0X2 Created for Subbucultcha Horses in The Void, Amsterdam (NL) 2019
Performed by Federica Dalla Pozza, Elisa Zuppini
> TRANSMATERIAL premiere at Frascati Theater - 2018, Amsterdam (NL)
Performed by Federica Dalla Pozza, Gergo Farkas, Tamir Eting, Elisa Zuppini
> LIIL premiere at Frascati Theater -2018, Amsterdam (NL)
Performers by Federica Dalla Pozza, Elisa Zuppini
> Fontana dei movimenti premiere at Veem House -2017, Amsterdam (NL)
A piece for 7 dancers
> Room Xelle premiere at Theaterschool -2016, Amsterdam (NL)
Performed by Elisa Zuppini
> Singularities on the edges of nowhere premiere at Villa Srozzi -2016, Florence (IT)
A piece for 9 dancers
> Might be dancing / manifested perception premiere premiere at Theaterschool -2016, Amsterdam (NL)
Performed by Alex Scholnik, Mami Kang, Imola Nagy
> Over the East, near the West premiere at Theaterschool -2015, Amsterdam (NL)
Performed by Andrea Pisano/Estefano Romani, Elisa Zuppini
Collaborations
> In the frame of 'Landscaping' research project by Whynot organization, Elisa creates a performance with Nica
Amsterdam BosTheater 2021
> Bare Time dance performance, in collaboration with Dramaturg Koen Bartjin
Work for galleries, presented at W139 and Punt WG, Amsterdam 2019-2021
> Reorienting The Fall video work, in collaboration with Visual Artist Chrystopher Tym
Premiered at Cinedans, Amsterdam 2021
> The Performative Role of Jewellery, in collaboration with Jewellery Maker Lavinia Rossetti
Research project at Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp 2018-2021
> Solid Dance dance performance, in collaboration with Choreographer Sigrid Stigsdatter
Premiere at One Night Stand Dansatelier, Rotterdam 2019
Fashion and video direction
> Movement director for Caterina Barbieri's music video Broken Melody, Milano IT 2022
> Coordinator director for Magliano's Fashion show SS23 Milano IT 2022
> Movement director for Avoidstreet Fashion show 'Piazzale Lotto', Amsterdam NL 2022
Curation
> Body DROP event- The Material and Political Gesture of Djing and Dancing; curated in collaboration with Choreographer Noha Ramadan
At ADE Amsterdam Dance Event, Amsterdam 2019
> It's waiting to be created improvisation evening, with Lester Arias and Nikki Niklas Bloomberg
at Oorsprong, Amsterdam 2015
Awards/Scholarships
> DansWeb Long Life Burning, Elisa is selected to participate in a summer residency of 5 weeks at Impulstanz Festival
Vienna (AT) 2018
> Awarded Young Talent in choreography 2016 by Open FLR, where Elisa is invited to make a work for 9 young professional dancers
Presented at Villa Strozzi, Florence (IT) 2016
Residencies
> Residency at Campus Porto PT, Spring 2023
> Residency at Dock 11, in collaboration with composer M.E.S.H. James Whipple, February 2021, Berlin (DE)
> Residency at Dansmakers New Adventures, March 2020, Amsterdam (NL)
> Residency at ICK Amsterdam Dance Company, July/Sept 2019, Amsterdam (NL)
> Residency at Choreographic Center Heidelberg, May 2019, Heidelberg (DE)
> Residency at Teatro Campo Alegre, Sept/Oct 2017, Port (PT)
Teaching and sharing her artistic practice De.sy.re
> Artez AKI, October 2021, Enschede (NL)
> SNDO School for New Dance development, Amsterdam 2020/2021
> Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, October 2020, in the frame of Body and Material Reinvented researchers; Antwerp (BL)
> Rietveld Academy of Fine Arts, February 2020, Amsterdam
> FAICC professional course in choreography and performance, Porto (PT) 2020/2021
> Jacuzzi Amsterdam, 2018/2019
> ICK, workshop with ICK Dance Company, Amsterdam 2019
Works as performer for others
> Noha Ramadan research presentation at Tec Lab Theaterschool
2019, Amsterdam (NL)
> Museo De Agua by Rodrigo Sobarzo at ADE Amsterdam
2018, Amsterdam (NL)
> In many Hands by Kate Macintosh at Frascati Theater
2018, Amsterdam (NL)
> Renaissance by Marten Spangberg at Stedeljik Museum
2016, Amsterdam (NL)
> Magic Magazine by Ida Katinka at Frascati Theater- graduation work
2016, Amsterdam (NL)
> i feel like a water-dispenser of a hamster-cage by Ahmed El Gendy
2016, Amsterdam (NL)
> Manualis in vacuo by Antonia Steffens at Academy for theater and dance
2015, Amsterdam (NL)
> Maria Hassabi for Sndo at Doc zal
2015, Amsterdam (NL)
> bei by Chanbei Duan at Academy for theater and dance
2015, Amsterdam (NL)
> Maktub noir, Elisa is a dancer in the italian dance company directed by Pietro Pireddu
2012-2014, Florence (IT)
She presented her work at: Veem House for Performance Amsterdam (NL) 2023; GAMeC Gallery for Modern and Contemporary Art Bergamo (IT) 2022; ECD Expanded Contemporary Dance Academy Amsterdam (NL) 2022; Amsterdam Bostheater August 2021; Tanzbiennale Heidelberg Germany 2021, Julidans Off Venue, Amsterdam 2021 (still to happen); Punt WG gallery, Amsterdam 2021; Critical Costume, Oslo 2020; Het Heem, Amsterdam 2020; NDSM ex warhouse, Amsterdam 2020; Kunstelicht art space, Amsterdam 2020; Dansmakers New adventures, Amsterdam 2020; ICK Fest, Amsterdam October 2019; Antidote Festival, Amsterdam 2019/2020; Groningen Friday Night, 2020; W139 Gallery, Amsterdam 2019; Van Gogh Museum Amsterdam 2019; De Apple art space, Amsterdam 2019; Club OT301, Amsterdam 2019; Arti et Amicitiae art space, Amsterdam 2019; Corrosia Dance Festival, (Almere, NL) 2019; Spider Festival (Ljubljana, SLO) 2018; Uferstudio, (Berlin,DE) 2018; Frascati Theater Amsterdam 2018; Dansmakers (Amsterdam,Nl) 2018, Gelderland fabriek (Culemborg, NL) 2017; VRJIDAG (Groeningen, NL) 2017; Villa Strozzi (Florence, IT); Theaterschool (Amsterdam, NL); Baudhuis Theater (Amsterdam, NL); Teatro Campo Alegre (Porto, PT); Magma Events (Florence, IT).
M E T A L C R A C K S
breaking through
new
levels of abstractions
De.sy.re. Is a non fixed system of movement, non dogmatic and constantly transforming. Mediation as an operative and abstract system.
Jacuzzi is a convergence of Amsterdam-based choreographers, who act as a fluid support structure for each other and a host body for a multitude of movement practices and performance related events. At Jacuzzi we gather in order to share, reflect, problematise and imagine new conditions for art production in order to practice and celebrate our enthusiasm for the importance of dance. More info.
Elisa Zuppini has developed an idiosyncratic movement quality and a choreographic aesthetic that develops around the axes of the knees and which became iconic in her own work. This peculiarity derives from a research on movement systems that she started working on during her studies in choreography.
She studied directional logics between body, space and anatomy - which give rise to prismatic figures moving closely and from the floor. She sees this formal outflow as an interweaving of concepts and technical virtuosity which are sourced both from philosophical interests and dance history. In fact, she also drew inspiration from Ballet, in the deconstruction of its verticality and frontality, while maintaining its elongated and circular forms (those understood as axioms in the architectural and sensorial relationship between body and space).
In this intersection between depth and form she outdraws and proposes new imaginative readings on the body, in relation to our current times.
(in gif_Federica Dalla Pozza)
Advising/Dramaturgy: Nov - Jan 2023, Elisa will work as a dramaturgical advisor for Balder Hansen's solo Optical Neuritis, Amsterdam.
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Residency: 27th - 2nd November 2023, Elisa will be in residency at Vallegaudia, Pesaro; in collaboration with RAM – Residenze Artistiche Marchigiane (promoted by MiC and Regione Marche).
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Show: 20th of December 2023, Synthetic Disjunctions at Warm Bad Amsterdam, the Digital Edition.
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Teaching and facilitating: 20th and 21st November 2023, together with Michael Scerbo, Elisa will facilitate two days workshop for the new Cinedans interdisciplinary project "Moving Media Lab".
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Show: 6th October 2023, Himalaya during Festival FAROUT, BASE Milano. More info.
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Show: 3rd October 2023, Himalaya during Festival Feeling Curious?, Theatre Rotterdam. More info.
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Residency: 18th-28th September 2023, Elisa will be in residency at Armunia, Toscana, for the second part of the research grant Bodyscape, erogated to her by Danza Urbana, Italy. More info.
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Fashion Show: 17th September 2023, VOID design by Eduardo Leon and movement direction by Elisa Zuppini, Sint Annentstraat 30, Amsterdam. More info.
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Show: 9th September 2023, Himalaya will be shown during the festival Danza Urbana, Bologna, Fienile Fluò. More info.
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Show: 31st August 2023, Synthetic Disjunctions at LOOM #3 Subbacultcha, Posthoornkerk, Amsterdam. More info.
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Residency/Presentation: 10th-14th July 2023, Elisa is in residency at FLAM, Arti et Amicitiae Amsterdam, where Elisa will work on a new creation. Presentation on Friday 14th.
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Mentoring: 15th-27th June 2023, Elisa is one of the mentors at Nomadic School Little Fun Palace in the Alps, Trentino, Italy. More info.
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Advising: May/June 2023, Elisa is advising the creation process of Asya Deynekina for her graduation work at SNDO School for New Dance Development. Premiere: 1st - 3rd of June Temple, Amsterdam.
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Residency: 8th-14th May 2023, Elisa is one of the residents of the program 'Atelier per lo spazio pubblico' at Lavanderia a Vapore, Collegno (IT).
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Show: 23rd-24th June 2023, Himalaya at Synergy Festival. Amsterdam (NL).
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Residency: 27th March - 17th 2023, of April Elisa is in residency at CAMPUS in Porto (PT) to develop her new creation. More info.
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Teaching: 9th - 14th April 2023, Elisa will be sharing her practice and research De.sy.re. at CAMPUS in Porto (PT)
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Teaching: 9th March 2023, Elisa will encounter the students of Expanded Contemporary Dance in Amsterdam to talk about her research and share her vision and experience as a choreographer.
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Residency/Presentation: 6th - 17th March 2023, Elisa is in residency at Veem House for performance for the residency program GARDENING. Presentation on the 16th and 17th of March. Amsterdam. More info.
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Teaching: 15th February 2023, Elisa is teaching her practice De.sy.re. at SNDO, class SNDO1. Amsterdam.
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Advising: February - March 2023, Elisa is advising the graduation work 'Liquid hour' by Asya Deynekina at SNDO. Premiere at Frascati 9th, 10th, 11th of March. Amsterdam. More info.
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Residency: 2022/2023, Elisa won the research grant Dancescapes, erogated by Danza Urbana. The grant will provide 2 residency in Italy between 2022 and 2023 in support of Elisa's research and creation. The first residency is taking place at Sementerie Artistiche in December 2022 Bologna (IT). The second residency will happen at Armunia during September 2023, in Tuscany (IT). More info.
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Residency: October - November 2022, Elisa is part of the shared residency project 'Ricerca X' at Lavanderia a Vapore in Turin, (IT). More info.
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Fashion: 8th October 2022, fashion show Piazzale Lotto, a collection made by Eduardo Leon for which Elisa is choreographer and director. At Jacuzzi, Amsterdam. More info.
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Teaching: 17th and 18th October Elisa will teach a workshop together with Dahlia Lì at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia (US). More info.
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Residency: June 2022 - April 2023, Elisa is part of the program 'Nuove Traiettorie' which constitutes of residencies programs, Festival visits and network programs. Ravenna, Arboreto, Tuscania, Castiglioncello (IT). More info.
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Advising: September 2022, Elisa will advise Alexander Porter for the project Emotijng developed at DAS Master for choreography, Amsterdam (NL).
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Fashion: 19th June 2022, Elisa will be movement coordinator for Magliano Fashion House, collection SS23 - under the movement direction of Michele Rizzo. Milano (IT).
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Show: 4th June 2022, Elisa will perform at the music festival Lentekabinet in collaboration with producer and visual artist Agnes Momirski. Amsterdam (NL).
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Advising: June 2022, Elisa will advise Lucas Lagomarsino for his work 'hey, rococò' at SNDO1, Amsterdam (NL).
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Show: 29th May 2022, the performance 'Intoxication, acidity, compression' that Elisa made in collaboration with Michael Scerbo, will be presented in occasion of the finissage of the exhibition 'Dancing Plague' curated by Panos Giannikopolous at GAMeC gallery for Modern and Contemporary Art, Bergamo, Italy. More info.
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Workshop: May 2022, Elisa will lead a workshop with her practice at FAICC Professional Formation in Interpretation and Choreography, at Teatro Campo Alegre in Porto (PT).
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Advising: May 2022, Elisa will advise Alexander Porter for the project Emotijng developed at DAS Master for choreography, Amsterdam (NL).
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Show: 29th April 2022, Elisa creates Performing Landscapes - a performance with 16 dancers for ECD Expanded Contemporary Dance at Academy for Theater and Dance in collaboration with Whynot. Amsterdam, NL. More info.
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Show: March/April 2022, Elisa's work is part of the exhibition 'Dancing Plague' at GAMeC Museum in Bergamo, curated by Panos Giannikopolous; Bergamo (IT). More info
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Testimonial: 24th March 2022, Elisa is leading a testimonial on her work and research at FAICC - Teatro Campo Alegre (Porto,PT)
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Show: 18th November 2021, Synthetic Disjunctions at Pleintheater, Amsterdam. More info
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Show: 23rd October 2021, Landscaping with Nica x Whynot Festival in Vliegenbos, Amsterdam.
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Teaching De.sy.re: 8th October 2021 at Artez AKI Academy For visual Arts, Enschede (NL)
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Show: 1st to 4th September 2021, Landscaping with Nica x Whynot Festival, Amsterdam Bostheater. More info
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Show: 3rd&4th July 2021, Himalaya at Julidance Off Venue atJacuzzi space, Amsterdam 2pm. More info
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Show: 18th July 2021, Himalaya at Tanzbiennale Heidelberg, Germany. More info
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Show: 6th May 2021, Bare Time at Punt GW Gallery, Amsterdam_A collaboration with Koen Bartjin. More info
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Advisory: April 2021, to Alexander Blum Bertelsen's work 'Endlings' at SNDO School for New Dance Development
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Teaching De.sy.re: March 2021 Guest teacher at SNDO School for New Dance Development 2nd year, Amsterdam
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Show: 7th October 2020 Synthetic Disjunctions at Antidote 1on1 Festival, Kunstelicht Amsterdam Noord
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Show: 28th September 2020_Synthetic Disjunctions research presentation at Dansmakers Amsterdam.
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Show: 17th June 2020_Synthetic Disjunctions site specific at Antidote Festival 1on1, at NDSM, Amsterdam.
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Teaching De.sy.re: 10th-15th February 2020 at FAICC professional formation in choreography, at Teatro Campo Alegre, Porto (PT).
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Teaching De.sy.re: February 2020 Guest teacher at Rietveld Academy, VAV department, Amsterdam.
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Show: 18th and 19th December 2019, Bare time at W139, Amsterdam.
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Show: 4th November, Transmaterial 0X2 at Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam.
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Show: 27th October 2019, Himalaya at ICK Fest, Amsterdam. More info.
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Show: 17th October 2019, Himalaya try-out at Body DROP event, ICK x ADE, Amsterdam.
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Event: 17th October 2019, Body DROP - the material and political gesture of Djing and dancing, Amsterdam. More info.