Primavera dei Teatri 2023:
The proposals of the Collective Mine
and Equilibrio Dinamico

"Welcome to my Funeral” was performed by Equilibrio Dinamico Dance Company, created by Brandon Lagaert (former performer of Peeping Tom) with three female and one male dancer from the Puglia Ensemble.

The four performers, already on stage, wearing white suits and boots and are connected to a power generator positioned in the centre with neon yellow cables resembling umbilical cords. Only one dancer (Tonia Laterza) lies without wearing goggles and the others, as if guided by a dictatorial instinct in The Matrix, put it on to activate and normalize her. The space is drastically reduced by the presence of the generator, allowing only small robotic movements.

During tight movements, one dancer accidentally removes her goggles and, as if just born, is destabilized by what she sees around her. Approaching an illuminated bucket of water, she immerses her hands and, noticing the reflection of a face, talks to herself like Narcissus. The revelation drives her to want to awaken her companions from their technological sleep, but she is forced to fight until she disconnects all the electrical wires and then exits the scene.

Virtual energy begins to wane in the bodies to make room for an atrophied human sensitivity: the two remaining dancers embrace under a bull's-eye and slowly evoke a delicate kiss, given by the contact of the two goggles, and then lie together; the fourth, alone, in the limited space, moves with breakdance-like tricks before collapsing on stage.

Welcome to my funeral, as the title suggests, attempts to stage the impact of technology on humanity and its relationships, sacrificing much of the stage space with the generator, through which, metaphorically, it expresses the theme in the end. This recurring theme is undeniably a characteristic aspect of our society, aided daily by technology that brings us together in ways different from analog.

Despite being visually captivating thanks to Alessandro Caso's lighting design, Welcome to my Funeral distances itself somewhat from the audience by presenting itself as an aesthetic picture, evoking memories of some moments from Charlie Brooker's post-apocalyptic TV series Black Mirror.

Rough translation from an article written for the website Paneacqueculture.net