as part of the Fabbrica Europa 2026 festival

Strike Two, a new choreographic work by Philippe Kratz, presented by Fabbrica Europa in preview, emerges from an engagement with Piano Trio No. 2, composed by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1944 following the death of his closest friend, the musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky. Rooted in the tradition of the Trio élégiaque, the work unfolds between personal grief and collective memory, between war and remembrance. In its final movement, a theme inspired by Jewish folk music develops into a macabre dance that gradually dissolves into fragments of the musical material. Years later, Shostakovich would return to this motif in his String Quartet No. 8, dedicated to the victims of fascism and war.

Strike Two takes its starting point from this tension, which the work does not seek to illustrate but to inhabit.
On stage, two bodies share a space without their relationship ever being defined with certainty: they may be siblings, adversaries, lovers, strangers, or the same person continually encountering themselves outside of themselves.

Every gesture simultaneously contains the possibility of support and erasure, of listening and resistance.
Nothing is resolved. Every balance is continually called into question.

In baseball, “strike two” refers to the second missed attempt. It is not yet the end, but it is the moment when its approach becomes tangible: a suspended state in which time contracts and every action acquires a different weight.
There is still no conclusion, yet returning to the beginning is no longer possible.

Philippe Kratz (Leverkusen, 1985) approached dance through German Tanztheater, guided by pedagogue and choreographer Suheyla Ferwer. He trained at the École supérieure de danse du Québec in Montréal and the Staatliche Ballettschule in Berlin before joining Aterballetto, where he worked with numerous international choreographers. It was within this context that he began to develop his own choreographic path, supported by Cristina Bozzolini.
Since his debut with Phoenix (2017), his choreographic research has explored processes of construction, destruction, deconstruction, and recomposition, investigating the resilient core that runs through them. With the duet O (2018), inspired by an encounter between two humanoid robots, he won the 32nd Hannover Choreography Competition and received a residency with Australian Dance Theatre. In 2015 and 2019, TANZ magazine selected him among its “Hoffnungsträger / One to Watch”, and in 2019 he received the Danza&Danza Award for cloud|materia, a work inspired by the ideas of Anni Albers, a key figure of the Bauhaus.
He has collaborated with major companies and institutions, including Aterballetto, TanzMainz, Gauthier Dance Company, Nuovo Balletto di Toscana, Wiener Staatsballett, Bayerisches Staatsballett, the Croatian National Ballet of Zagreb, and Teatro alla Scala in Milan. In 2024 and 2025, he was artistic director of Nuovo Balletto di Toscana and, during the same period, won the Italian production call of the Venice Dance Biennale 2025 with Sisifo felice, created together with Pablo Girolami.

choreography: Philippe Kratz
dancers: Alberto Terribile and Donnie Duncan
music: Piano Trio No. 2 by Dmitri Shostakovich
performed live by musicians from the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole: Ruben Have (violin), Viviana Di Rita (piano), Rebecca Rotondi (cello)
production and and distribution in Italy: Stazione Utopia