Projects & Research // BlackBirdBoy (2012)

BlackBirdBoy (2012)

A solo performance

In coproduction with Dansateliers Rotterdam, MMcompany Reggio Emilia and Spellbound Contemporary Company Rome

This solo performance questions human narcissism and how it is influenced by an omnipresent dictatorship of the images and the surface. This necessarily results in a more existential question for both the self and the observer: what is fact and what is imagination? Can they be separated from each other?


Finally everything – inspired by playing with appearance and reality on stage – leads towards the one and main issue: Who judges whom? And why? And based on which ‘facts’?

Motivated by having been awarded ‚Cologne’s Best Performer 2011‘, Emanuele Soavi explores these questions during a highly personal performance. His most important references and sources of inspiration are the works of Virginia Woolf, the photographers Claude Cahun and Ralph E. Meatyard as well as film-maker and visual artist David Lynch.

Choreography / Stage : Emanuele Soavi
Dramaturgy: Amy Gale, Stefan Bohne
Music: Stefan Bohne
Video, Lighting Designer: Cristina Spelti
Costume: Pino Cervino
Management / PR: Alexandra Schmidt
Assistance: Silvia Werner
Stagehands: Michael Götz, Henning Vahlbruch
Photos: Predrag Pajdic, Joris-Jan Bos

BlackBirdBoy was subsidized by the Cultural Office of Cologne, the NRW Ministry for Families, Children, Youth, Culture and Sports, SK Stiftung Kultur, NRWKultursekretariat Wuppertal and Theater Institut Nederland

Video produced by TANZweb.org 2012