Presented by Compagnia Artemis Danza/Monica Casadei

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2936 N Southport Ave, Chicago, IL

Pasolini’s research would begin from the body: his own, lean and athletic, and from his hunger for bodies, which emerges from all of his work in its lights and shadows. Through the characters, words and images that populate his oeuvre, the Emilian author manifested his thought and made it into a work of art open to different interpretations.

The language of dance, merging body and soul, becomes a powerful tool to revive the complexity of his thought: there is the woman-mother - pillar of his poetic and cinematographic production - there is the notion of freedom, there is poetry, there is Bach's music - with whom he sought to establish an artistic partnership - and there is the sacredness of the gesture. All these ingredients populate texts and visions that give life to an homage made of tension and redemption, dreams and utopias. A fresco of humanity and its paradoxes that lives in the past and the present, exciting and opening our eyes to existence.

In Monica Casadei's choreography there is the sun of Roma’s “borgate” (the hamlets of Rome), where life pulsates, children play and the young, dressed in colorful clothes, dream and fight for their rights. In “Pasolini-Fuochi segreti” there is the warmth of that sun, the blue of the sky and the warm air of spring.

MONICA CASADEI AND ARTEMIS DANZA

“Everything mankind has experienced is written on the body. Dancing your soul out, the old one as well as the one we possess nowadays, equals putting movement and form to the service of need, urgency, emotion and soul”  M. C.

Originally from Ferrara, Monica Casadei graduates in philosophy cum laude writing a dissertation on dance in Plato’s system. After a career as a professional acrobatic gymnast, she takes to studying classic and modern dance, at first in Italy, then in London, and eventually in Paris where she gets to meet choreographers Pierre Doussaint and Isabelle Doubouloz and the Master André Cognard Hanshi So Shihan, with whom she still practices the martial art of Aikido.

In France, she founds the company Artemis Danza, with which she later moves to Italy, in 1997, giving birth to a fervent production activity that amounts, nowadays, to over 40 original creations.

From 1998 to 2007, the Company is part of an artist residency at Fondazione Teatro Due in Parma whereas, from 2014 up to this day, it partakes in an artist residency at Teatro Comunale in Bologna. Artemis Danza has been invited to the most important Italian theaters and festivals and to several international tours and festivals.

Pivotal elements in Monica Casadei’ s artistic research are the influences from different artistic, cultural and geographic fields and the exploration of urban spaces and places that turn into stages for performances.

Alongside the production activity, Artemis funds, produces and promotes young choreographers and organizes several activities meant to artistically educate the audience.