Fragments, rubble, ruins, fractures and scars.
We are broken bodies. We are all broken.
We must become artisans of “kinsughi”,
a Japanese art that repairs the shards and reassembles them
by pouring molten gold on the breaking edges.
A process that instead of hiding the cracks makes them precious.

WHERE is a project of cohesion, creation, research and innovation.
This is not yet another production destined for a complex, difficult and evanescent market, but a process for the regeneration of artistic practice in the field of choreography. We feel the need to re-establish and regenerate our actions and our own collective, around what we will discover we still recognize ourselves.

The encounter with places, communities, experiences and cultures is fundamental.
We need to experience the encounter with the public in a participatory party dimension, breaking away from the performative canons, breaking the dividing line between stage space and stalls, overturning the rigid axiom of production and consumption, questioning the sustainability of acting. The uniqueness of the stage discourse now appears anachronistic to us.

The research activity aimed at creation certainly still has great importance in feeding fun and joy, however we are not setting ourselves the goal of producing a choreographic work. We are digging as archaeologists in our flesh, in our memories, in knowledge, to let emerge what, beyond the desires, influences our subconscious, our creativity and our being together, defining the rules and the dividing line between what is sayable and what is not. We collect the pieces of our humanity to put them back together, without hiding the suture margins, but pouring gold into them to highlight them and create unique pieces, to be proud of.
– Giulio De Leo –

Giulio De Leo is choreographer and curator of festivals and projects of contemporary dance and body languages. His work stands out for its rigor and curiosity towards communities, rituals and the anthropological investigation of society through dance. Since 2008 he has founded Menhir Dance Company, creates various choreographies and directs numerous contemporary dance shows and programs. From 2013 to 2016 he is coordinator of La Biennale di Venezia College Danza. From 2015 to 2020 he coordinates the dance activities of the Garibaldi Theater in Bisceglie (Nievskij Prospect and Libero Corpo). Since 2017 he has been artistic director of the dance section of Talos Festival and in 2021 he founded Le Danzatrici_archeologia del Contemporaneo, a research project, development, artistic residencies, audience engagement and programming.

project: Giulio De Leo
in close collaboration with Gabriella Catalano, Claudia Gesmundo, Erika Guastamacchia
music: Moby
guests of the project: Vanessa Cokaric, Antonio Savoia
technical collaboration and light design: Antonio Longo
project care: Marina Peschetola
production: Compagnia Menhir Danza
in collaboration with MAT Laboratorio Urbano, Terlizzi; TEX Il Teatro dell’ExFadda, San Vito dei Normanni , Albanian Public Theatre, HARPA Foundation, Tirana Municipality, Tirana European Youth Capital 2022

[photo: Cinzia Cantatore]