Carlo Massari

One performer is lying on his back on the ground, another is standing over him and holding his arms outstretched.

Jos Baker + Carlo Massari, Strangers in the night | ph Monia Pavoni

Carlo Massari wears a red and white sweatshirt and balances on the back of his feet

Metamorphosis, Carlo Massari

A dancer rehearses in the Studio. She is on the floor, with her feet on the floor, lifting her pelvis upward and rotating her torso, bearing her weight on her right shoulder.

Residence Carlo Massari C&C Company | ph Gerardo Brentari

Six female dancers, apparently naked, form a circle on the empty stage. A neon light from above illuminates them.

Right | ph Simone Cargnoni

The stage is lit by a dim red light. Six women in lab coats look toward the room from the back of the stage. On the ground in front of them, six decomposed bodies lose their shapes to become something else.

Right | ph Simone Cargnoni

Some naked human bodies dance in a circle, facing outward. In the center is an elderly woman in a lab coat, smoking a cigarette. Under the gown she is naked; multiple pairs of breasts are visible on her chest.

Right | ph Sarah Melchiori

A dancer during a warm-up in the Studio. He is lying on the floor and lifting his legs and pelvis above his head.

Residence Carlo Massari C&C Company | ph Gerardo Brentari

C&C Company

Carlo Massari is a transdisciplinary performer, choreographer and creator active in the Italian and international contemporary scene. Always in search of new languages, he deepens the hybridization and blend of the various performing disciplines, defining a clear and recognizable distinctive feature in an "amphibious" form.

His eclectic training and professional path is characterized by experiences that have alternated between drama, musical theater, dance and physical theater. Over the years he has collaborated as an interpreter for: Venice Biennale, Barbara Nativi, Marco Baliani, Teatro dell’Argine, TeatroDue, Cie. Balletto Civile, Cie. Abbondanza-Bertoni, Cie. della Rancia, Cie. Petri Dish.

In 2011 he became the co-founder and Artistic Director of C&C Company, a research and production company specializing in the field of dance-theater.

The old world is dying. The new one is slow to appear. And in this chiaroscuro, monsters are born.

- Antonio Gramsci

In 2024, the artist started in our studio to work on the cross-disciplinary project Strangers in the night, part of the three-year research on 'Metamorphoses' already initiated by the C&C Company in 2022.

Inspired by Kafka's The Metamorphosis, the new original creation by Carlo Massari and Jos Baker in collaboration with Linus Jansner, MArtina La Ragione e Chiara Osella, deeply and ironically investigates the thin line between reality and fiction, between the honesty of being and the role to be played, between concrete 'acting' and pantomime.

Dreamy and subtly political, Strangers in the night was born with the intention of combining social realism with tragicomic writing, inviting the viewer to reflect on the present (and perhaps the near future) through black, biting humour.

Severely ironic, the poetic composition employs the language of defeat to speak of hope, of decadence awaiting rebirth, of the fall that precedes (perhaps) the longed-for ascent.

With the beginning of 2022, Carlo Massari, associated artist of Oriente Occidente since 2021, begins a new three-year research project on the thin border between man and beast; a research on transformations, change, the physical and spiritual alterations of being, the search for one's own nature, identity, form.

Metamorphosis is going to explore the concept of the human being as a thinking animal with an individual conscience, and then to discover, denude, relate it to its most real instincts, the fears that make it powerless, its most animalistic face, the pure truth of the body.

In the age of images, of appearing, of "look at me", we find ourselves fragile "little beasts", owners despite ourselves of a form to be filled, to be shaped, but not having exactly an idea of how to do it.

- Carlo Massari

In 2021 Carlo Massari's research is focused on Le sacre du Printemps by I. F. Stravinsky. The well-known composition becomes a starting point to question the concept of "morality", a principle handed down to us by past generations through the invention of myths and narratives that sanctions: this is right and this is wrong, this is good and this is bad, this is moral and this is immoral. Right as in straight, proper, good.

The project initiates an artistic collaboration between C&C Company and COB Compagnia Opus Ballet. The result is the performance Right premiered at Oriente Occidente Dance Festival 2021.

Are we ready for the sacrifice? Obviously not our own! It will always be up to someone else to sacrifice themselves for the good of the community; perhaps to a virgin, the most fragile and naive... And who has got the right of choice? The old, wise and elect ones, obviously. But are we sure the elderly hold within themselves the power of absolute wisdom and the authority to decide what is right for others and what is not?

- Carlo Massari

In July 2018, a few years before becoming an associated artist, Carlo Massari spends at Oriente Occidente Studio a residency period of about twenty days.

A physical research for the definition of a common language and a deep work on the different ways of physical and verbal relational approach between two or more bodies. During the path of creation, dance as a language of narration within a scenic and dramaturgic framework intersects with word, song, new circus and transformism.

The body, understood as an instrument, abandons virtuosity to put itself at the service of the basic communication level of the contemporary experience of "making theater". The development of the work leads to an irreverent, cynical study on the archetypes of human misery, on inexpressivity, on the despicable cruelty in interpersonal relationships.

ceccompany.org

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Strangers in the night

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Right

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METAMORPHOSIS | BLATTA

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