choreography: Sang Jijia
composer: Dickson Dee
live video artists: Luca Brinchi and Roberta Zanardo
light design: Marco Policastro
costumes: Giuseppina Maurizi
choreography assistants: Yanan Yu and Adriana De Santis
dancers: Spellbound Contemporary Ballet
production: Fondazione Fabbrica Europa, Spellbound Contemporary Ballet,
Fondazione Milano Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi, Marche Teatro – Danza alle Muse
Bejing Dance Festival, Guangdong Dance Festival

Pa|Ethos is made up of two words, Pathos and Ethos, borrowed from Aristotle’s Art of Rhetoric.
The choreographer Sang Jijia uses them to signify two approaches to the subject discussed. Ethos underlines precision, Pathos evokes passion and feeling.
The work is based on Italian plastic art of the classical era and is divided into two parts. The first looks at the rules of social life where interpersonal relations are rigidly distributed. Each movement in space is well measured and carefully executed. In the second, emotions are translated into the physicality of the dancers; taking stage action to its most extreme, they achieve complete transparency of body through which the soul is revealed in its entirety.
The poetic art of Sang Jijia, who comes from Tibet, rests on the profundity of Eastern thought and is enriched by the most important experiences of European research in dance and contemporary theatre. A precise and original meeting between rigour and expressiveness that become the ingredients giving rise to Pa|Ethos.
The project includes the presence of the well-known composer Dickson Dee, and the collaboration of Luca Brinchi and Roberta Zanardo, for the virtual set design.

Born in Gansu, Tibetan Sang Jijia has been dancing and choreographing professionally since 1993, following his studies at the Music and Dance Department of the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing, China. He began his career as a dancer and choreographer with the Guangdong Modern Dance Company. In 1999, he left to join City Contemporary Dance Company of Hong Kong. Acknowledged for his powerful technique, Sang’s performances have received rave reviews in Asia and the West as he has collaborated with leading choreographers from around the globe. He received the Gold Medal in Modern Dance from the Paris International Dance Competition in 1996 and was hailed as “The Star of the Century” by the Guangdong Provincial Government in 1997. In 2002, Sang was selected by The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in its inaugural year to study choreography under William Forsythe in Germany. He continued with Ballett Frankfurt and later the Forsythe Company as assistant choreographer and dancer until 2006. Sang is currently Resident Artist with Beijing Dance / LDTX.
His major works include Blue in Show Your Colours, 365 Ways of Doing and Undoing Orientalism (co-choreographed with Willy Tsao and Xing Liang), Happening Continuous for Movement Fiber, Unspeakable and Standing Before Darkness for BeijingDance / LDTX, Sticks for Guangdong Modern Dance Company, and As If To Nothing for CCDC, presented with great success last year at the new theatre of Opera di Firenze as part of Fabbrica Europa.
His works have been presented in Korea’s Chang Mu Dance Festival, Swiss International Dance Festival, International Computer Music Festival, Taipei Arts Festival, Holland Dance Festival, Huayi – Chinese Festival of Arts in Singapore, Guangdong Modern Dance Festival, Beijing Modern Dance Festival, and Dance Salad Festival of Houston.

Sound artist, composer and producer, Dickson Dee (Li Chin Sung) has been engaged in the music industry for more than 25 years. His career started from importing European independent labels to Hong Kong, China and Taiwan; he then established his own music label Noise Asia, organizing concerts etc. His experience includes distribution, import/export, creation, publishing, promotion, artist management and other kinds of works in the industry. He has made a great contribution to the development of independent music in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan. In 1996, Dickson’s debut solo album Past was released under the Tzadik label (USA). Since then, he began to set foot on the creation field with musical styles ranging from avantgarde to experimental, musique concrete, electronic, new classical, industrial noise, dance, electronic world jazz etc. He has performed under different names and formed several bands. For example, DJ Dee for electronic experimental music, Li Chin Sung for musique concrete and avantgarde, PNF for industrial noise, Khoomi Sound Machine for electronic world jazz, Dickson Dee for electronic acoustic, sampling cut ‘n’ paste and turntablism. Mars News Ensemble for mixed film, music, multimedia art project.
Dickson set up his personal label Dicksonia Audio beside Noise Asia, which concentrates on the release and publishing of his own works. This provides more freedom and convenience to further develop his creativity.
Besides concerts, Dickson also appears in arts academy and university for workshops and lectures to share his experiences with students, hoping to trigger their interest on sound art and music; furthermore, to give them a better understanding on the different aspects of music.

Luca Brinchi and Roberta Zanardi are based between Rome and Bruxelles.
They have worked with the Santasangre Company since the early years of the new millennium. In 2012 they started working on their individual artistic project and artistic collaborations.
In the last two years they have collaborated with Jan Fabre on the contemporary opera Tragedy of the friendship, with lacasadargilla and Muta Imago on Art You Lost?, a social-interactive installation made by 1000 people, with Fabrizio Arcuri/Accademia degli Artefatti on Ritratto di una Capitale, a marathon-show of 12 hours about Rome, with Andrea Baracco on Hamlet and Veronica Cruciani on Un biscotto sotto il sofa. In Europe they attended in Tsekh Festival of Moscow (RUS), Grec Festival of Barcelona (ES), in Noorderzon Festival of Groningen (NL), in Divadelna Nitra Fest (SK), Eurokaz of Zagreb (HR), in Kontrapunkt of Stettin (PL), in Exodos of Ljubjana, in Temp d’images of Warsaw (PL) and Cluj (RO), in Sophiensale of Berlin (D), Ferme du buisson of Paris (FR) and at the Biennial Expo of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean in Naples (IT). In Italy they performed in the Romaeuropa Festival, in Fabbrica Europa, in Drodesera>Centrale Fies, in Festival delle Colline Torinesi, in Bassano OperaEstate, in Santarcangelo Festival, in MIT of Rome, Inteatro/Polverigi.
Their journey aims to start a process of expressive contamination on a transversal axis touching the most significative styles of performing arts such as video, music, body art and environmental aesthetic design.

Spellbound Contemporary Ballet was established in 1994 on the initiative of the choreographer Mauro Astolfi who founded the company after returning from a long artistic stay in the US. Since 1996 Astolfi shares the project with Valentina Marini with whom the Company began a process of intense internationalization and cross-collaborations. The rich artistic project, together with a dynamic and constantly evolving concept, has facilitated the broad dissemination of the creations at national and international level.
Acclaimed for the excellence of its performers and the versatility of the choreographic language, Spellbound have preformed in major theaters and festivals (Germany, France, Serbia, Croatia, Cyprus, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Spain, Austria, Israel, Russia, Belarus, United States, Canada, Panama, Thailand and Korea).
Thanks to the modernity of its programs and the wide repertoire, the company has become a leader in terms of the international cultural offer and it’s always active in exchange projects and networking in connection with the most fertile European art scene. In 2014 the ensemble celebrated the twentieth anniversary of activity, a period in which it has developed with increasing interest training and educational projects for both the public and at least two generations of dancers.

partners for the creation residency: Fondazione Teatro della Toscana |
Centro per la Sperimentazione e la Ricerca Teatrale di Pontedera
technical sponsors: Teatro Greco – E.C.O. Italia, Cyberaudio, Noise Asia Ltd

(*) The first part original version comes from “Pathos” music by
Dickson Dee, sponsored and commissioned by Composers and Authors
Society of Hong Kong (CASH)

[photo: Andrea Gianfortuna]