The performance series BAU – Choreography of thinking is based on research that examine the most instinctive aspect of human thinking as well as the conscious perception of reality. Having been begun in 2013, this exploration has resulted in a work method applicable to dance and other performing arts.
Focusing on the invisible connections between body and mind, the performance prompts interaction between performers and audience, in a non-verbal dialog between their respective internal spaces.
Over time, this practice was transformed into a precise stylistic approach, which puts the audience at the center of investigation – demonstrating the necessary and crucial polarity of any performance. The central question, which in a way is secularly mystical: “What does it mean to exist simultaneously in matter and non-matter? Is it possible to find a mode, a space that facilitates the perception of the unity between these two conditions?”

BAU #1 starts from the attention to the processes created by the “action of thinking” and the intentions such processes can produce. For example, in a space, how can we recognize a change in energy, understood as a state of the presence of the performer and the public? Starting from some practices related to meditation, BAU #1 explores the phenomenon of disembodiment in choreographic terms, creating, seeking and recognizing the moment of separation and detachment between the action of thinking, and thought itself. In order to try to focus on that indefinable condition of presence-in-absence, between mind and body, the areas of the non-human and non-verbal are explored, across movement and word. This production aims at constructing, experiencing and analyzing a guided meditation, as an inner process in dialogue and in interaction with the audience.

Barbara Berti

Born and raised in Bologna, Italy, Barbara Berti bases herself in Berlin.
She works on her own choreographic projects and collaborates with dance and theatre artists in performance art work through Western Europe: Isabelle Schad, Tino Seghal, Judith Seng, Gabi Schilling, the istitution Bauhaus. She rooted her career in graphic design, physical theatre, dance and meditation; continued studying different techniques in contemporary dance, contact improvisation, meditation, yoga, somatic works and body-mind centering approaches.
In her choreographic works she is interested in issues of kinesthetic empathy and the embodied transmission of physical experience in the interaction with the audience. In 2014, she was the winner of the theater dance prize HAU2-100Grad Berlin, with her solo I am a shape in a shape, doing a shape; with the Italian version it was selected in Vetrina Gd’a 2016 and finalist in the Premio Gd’a 2017.
In 2017 she was the winner in ex-quo of the Premio Scenario with Bau #2 – From the Series BAU ‘Choreography of thinking’. In 2019 she represented the 100 Year anniversary of Bauhaus with a solo. Between 2017 and 2018 she was artist supported by Tir danza (IT).
From 2019 she is an artist supported from Ariella Vidach Aiep

choreographic creation and performance: Barbara Berti
dramaturgy advisor: Carlotta Scioldo
choreography assistant: Liselotte Singer
lights assistant: Thomas Cicognani
produzione: TIR Danza
with the support of Ariella Vidach
in collaboration with DiD Studio NAO CREA residenze, H(abita)T – Rete di spazi per la danza, Ballhaus Ost (Berlin) and Santarcangelo Festival

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