Four figures dressed in white move diagonally across the stage as if in a Möbius strip, or what Berrettini calls “contemporary flow”. Short, animated statements are placed on the diagonal like tweets. “iFeel3”, which premiered at ADC in Geneva in January 2016, continues in the vein of “iFeel2”, with its absence of dramaturgic chapters, in which Marco Berrettini and Marie-Caroline Hominal moved as if in a trance. Berrettini was inspired by the Russian-American author Ayn Rand’s 1957 work “Atlas Shrugged” to question individual social capabilities and convey choreography as personal experience. Marco Berrettini and Samuel Pajand play the music live: rather than accompanying the movements down below the gallery in which they are placed, their duo Summer Music provides a second level to the goings-on on stage, in the form of texts and electronic sound. The ending is so offbeat and unexpected that it cannot be given away.
“‘iFeel3’ transports us into an ecstatic atmosphere of particular power, with a skilful combination of dance performance and live ‘summer music’. On one side, the dancers move in an endless loop, constantly restarting from scratch; on the other, hypnotic sounds, political statements and philosophical musings on them encourage us to forge our own subjective connections and immerse ourselves in a game of sensation and thought. Marco Berrettini and his team serve up an ironic, committed and spicy cocktail in the third part of a series of four: loop after loop, ‘iFeel3’ casts its critical spell.”
*MELK Prod./Marco Berrettini
Dancer and choreographer Marco Berrettini was born in Aschaffenburg, Germany in 1963 with Italian heritage. He has been working with his *MELK Prod. company in Geneva since 2002. He discovered his interest in dance in discotheques during the 1970s, and won the German disco dancing championship in 1978. Following this success he took jazz dance, modern dance and ballet lessons, and began training as a dancer at the age of 17, initially at the London Contemporary Dance School, before completing his studies at the Folkwang University under Hans Züllig and Pina Bausch. While there, he developed an interest in dance theatre and choreography. To date he has created some 30 works, including performances and installations. In 1999, while still living in France, he won the ZKB Patronage Prize at the Zurich Theater Spektakel with “Sturmwetter prépare l’an d’Emil”.
