Brand new experimentation between Berlin and Naples: a “hybrid” residency in collaboration with Chiara Orefice, a performer based in Naples, to which Yotam Peled can “transmit” remotely his performance. During the days of residence, he will be connected via zoom with the artist to transmit his performance “migrena2x2” that the artist will act for him in her home. Together, Yotam and Chiara will reconstruct the performance, looking for a way for Yotam to be present during the repetitions open to the public. So the experiment is based on the possibility of being present even if at a distance. In this experiment, the concept of hospitality also extends to the body of the local artist, who “hosts” the performance, lending Yotam her body, voice, skill, and presence in the domestic space. Her mouth will host his tongue; her body will host his choreography and dramaturgy; the domestic space will host a new way of meeting, a “phygital” (physical-digital) way. Yotam’s “digital” presence remotely, live (and not recorded), will be essential during the performance; it can reduce the geographical distance between Italy and Germany.

migrena2X2 is a hybrid solo performance which exists in a confined space made of fragments of memory, introducing suspension and object manipulation. It is an abstract, contemporary interpretation of the story of biblical Jonah, embodying the notion of prophecy by exploring the subconscious, confronting traumas and fantasies. The burden of the performer is embodied by kettlebells, and its shedding unfolds through a ritual – between a prayer and a rave. An intensification of wild movement patterns causes the body to slowly deconstruct, decompose, melt and surrender to awaken an abstract material, a collective of limbs and organs devouring the space, emancipating hidden spaces and surfaces, reaching catharsis and eventually self recognition.

Yotam Peled & the Free Radicals + Chiara Orefice (DE / IT)

Yotam Peled​​ was born in Israel, in ‘89, and has been practicing fine arts, athletics, and capoeira since childhood. At the age of 21, after finishing his military service, he began dancing, and later on pursued higher education in contemporary circus. In 2015 he relocated to Berlin, and since then has been working as a freelance performer with several European choreographers, alongside creating his own choreographic work, which toured venues worldwide, and received several awards. Together with the ensemble ‘Yotam Peled & the Free Radicals’, he was a resident artist in ‘THINK BIG’ / TANZtheater International festival Hanover, TalentLAB#19 / Grand Theater Luxembourg, the Choreographic Center of Heidelberg, TanzLabor / ROXY Ulm, Skopje Dancer Theater, Tanzhaus Zürich, PimOff Milan, Altofest Naples. Yotam has been a guest teacher in ACAPA, Folkwang University of Arts, Dock11, Munstrum Theater, Cie. Hors Surface, Cia. Maura Morales, Overhead Project, PRISMA festival, among others.

Chiara Orefice is a dancer, singer, performer, based in Naples. She studied with Masaki Iwana, Sivia Rampelli, Claude Couldy, Ivan Wolf, Julie Stanzac, Maria Munoz. She completed her training with Raffalla Giordano at the Teatro Stabile di Torino and Teatro Dimora Arboreto in Mondaino. She deepened her study of voice and singing with Gey Pin Ang. She is one of the founders of Famiglia Fuchè, a group of performers dedicated to the study of collective writing processes starting from a listening network. With Silvia Mai and Sveva Scognamiglio she created the group Truappist. With the musician Raffaele Natale he collaborated on the project “Elles sont partout”. He worked with Teatro Valdoca on the show “Ora non hai più paura”.

“I imagine a numbered list in which loosing the thread, despite or because of the presence of numbers: the numbered list of preparatory exercises for the disappearance.” The work acts as an “intensive body, locally active by leaps, scraps, vibrations and modulations”.
More than a dramaturgical writing, it is a device, which gives the work the form of a zibaldone of thoughts, or baby thoughts. The figure, the dancing body and the word are the elements for the construction of specialised molecules, the individual exercises, in which the technology of the body is active, which disrupts, binds, multiplies the cells. It is an exercise in the reckless appropriation and use of codes, necessary for the localisation (in the body) of thought. The Exercises are exercised in indeterminacy, in the realm of the ‘prehistoric’, the unmeasurable. The focus is on the shift from the centrality of the work as a concluded fact to the composition as a decentralised place.

Amalia Franco (IT)

Amalia Franco is an independent artist and her research is centered on contamination between dance,
puppet theater and masks. She collaborates with Quartetto Maurice e Giulia Lo Russo for Corpo
Unico. She is author and performer in Trittico. Cantillazioni, in collaboration with Anna
Moscatelli and Renata Frana. Always on the mix between dance, puppets and masks creates
Trittico. Lasciare andare con grazia. As a performer he works for the Teatro del Lavoro in the
Histoire du soldat and with the company La barca dei matti, directed by Natacha Belova,
Ifoperator Production. In 2015 she is selected in Nuove Traiettorie, project for the GdA, with an study of Moving Masks. She carries out studies and works on urban theater and dramaturgy of the landscape and creates Tillandsie, drammaturgia urbana dei crolli, project training in Taranto city, in collaboration with Lajos Talamonti and Leonardo Delogu.

“Language is a constant act of identity. We are what we choose to say.”
– Vera Gheno, sociolinguist

Eufemia, from greek (she) who speaks well, well-spoken of, is a creation for one young woman and a typewriter. A non-romantic vision of romanticism meets a nostalgia for never-experienced times, to write a love letter for the Theater and its audience. Eufemia: heavenly, moody, eloquent, intimate, sophisticated, light-hearted. She is all you decide her to be.

Giorgia Lolli (IT)

Giorgia Lolli is an Italian dance artist. After graduating from Zürich University of the Arts – BA in Contemporary Dance, she moves to Israel to continue training with Batsheva and Kibbutz Contemporary Dance Company. As a student, she performed creations by Emanuel Gat, Rami Be’er, Dor Mamalia & Dariusz Nowak, Yoshiko Chuma and Regina Van Berkel. In 2019, she received iPortunus funding for a residency at Skopje Dance Theater, performing in creations by Simon Kuban and Yotam Peled. Since 2019, she active as a freelance dancer with projects in Italy, Denmark, Finland and Switzerland. Over the last years, she started her choreographic research: her work Eufemia has been selected for Italian platforms Anghiari Dance Hub and Vetrina della Giovane Danza d’Autore – Network Anticorpi XL, and toured Italy, Switzerland and Portugal.

Interferences, isolation, rhythm and trance. Nulla Concreto is the clumsy attempt of a human body to maintain a still state. It is the journey of a living being, through sound and movement, in search of a utopian neutrality. This project was born with the intention, at the beginning of the research, to create a piece of art where nothing and everything would have happened, sending a simple message with a still body, and with a monotonal and arrhythmic sound design. During the first research, it became clear that this desire to disappear, to hide from the public, from social networks, from the aggression of the city would be easilly overcome by the communicative impulse that the organic body needs, producing movement and sound. With the Pandemic, the meanings of interference and isolation have now undergone a radical change. All this words that lead our research changed in such an extreme way that the creative process cannot ignore.

Valeria Caboi & Manuel Pinheiro (PT)

Valeria Caboi is a choreographer, dancer and teacher. Graduated in Performing Arts from Univ. Sapienza of Rome and Post-graduated in Advanced Dance Studies at the London Contemporary Dance School, she also studied in I.A.L.S. (Rome), at M.A.S. (Milan), at Forum Dança (Lisbon). She participated in the Masters of dance – therapy at Sapienza of Rome. As a performer she collaborated with: Elisa Monte Dance Company (NY), Nine Bob Note (UK), GBCorsetti (IT), Arthur Pita (UK), CDN (PT), PIA (PT), The Yonis (UK), Aldara Bizarro (PT), TaikaBox (FIN). As a choreographer she created: GestAzione (Marte Live Award 2010, Rome), Red T-Shirt Project (England, Italy, Portugal 2012-2015). She was choreographer for the Swedish project Open Lab Halland (2015), EYE LIE (2016), The closest thing (2017).

Manuel Pinheiro is a Sound Designer / Musician / Sound Operator. He graduated in Sound Arts & Design at London College of Communication, after having studied Music Production in Lisbon at RESTART, Audio Techniques at ETIC, Photography at ARCO and Jazz at HOT CLUB. As a sound designer he works with choreographers and directors in England, Sweden and Portugal, such as: Ricardo Jacinto, Robin Dingemans, Young Vic Theater, Laura Farnsworth, Bijan Sheibani and writer Tarrel Alvin McCraney. As a percussionist and sound operator, he is part of the Portuguese pop / rock scene with Diabo Na Cruz, You Can’t Win Charlie Brown, Real Combo Lisbonense, Tv Rural.

The collaboration between the two artists began in 2011 when they met at London Contemporary Dance School (The Place), during the creation of the new technologies and remote choreography project “Red T-Shirt Project”, led by Valeria Caboi and with Manuel Pinheiro’s sound design. Together they also created EYE LIE (a creation that uses sound to lead unvisual or blindfolded dancers), Gray Coat Mood (dance video), and participated, respectively as a performer and sound designer, with the Portuguese company CDN (North Dance Company). Nulla Concreto, however, is the first work in which the two artists find themselves together on stage in a real co-creation, where sound and choreography want to keep the same level of communicative importance and where the threshold between different creative roles and their spaces wants to be broken.

Ateliersi proposes a different mode of fruition – intimate, individual, immersive – of its show The Map of the Heart by Lea Melandri, experimenting with the language of virtual reality,

In the mid-1980s, the weekly magazine “Ragazza In” made the disruptive choice of entrusting Lea Melandri, one of the most significant figures of Italian feminism, with a correspondence column in which she, instead of responding directly to the writer, opened a discussion with young readers, creating – in fact – a first social network. Following the “scandalous inversion between individual and culture” pursued by Lea, Ateliersi leads an emotional journey through those letters interweaving the urgencies of the time with present resonances.

Ateliersi (IT)

Ateliersi is an artistic production collective working in the performing and theatrical arts. Ateliersi is known for a scenic writing that transfigures the data of reality through their poetic and musical recomposition, Ateliersi is involved in both artistic creation and the curation and cultural programming of Atelier Sì in Bologna.
Ateliersi’s creation is composed of theatrical works and artistic interventions in which the performative gesture enters into organic dialogue with anthropology, literature, musical production and the visual arts to foster a thinking capable of intercepting anxieties and perspectives around the subversions occurring in the world. An anthropological approach to art characterized by an attraction to alterity, a predilection for cultural evolution as an object of study, the development of contextual dimensions, and experimentation with interdisciplinary practices.

Pinocchio is all the children, adolescents, familiar puppets that we have been. The state, taxpayer, professionally made or unemployed puppets. Flexible. Until they are slouched, disjointed, until they are no longer. What happened to Pinocchio after he became a boy and then a man of flesh and blood? Did he have a family, a woman, a man, did he have children? And what did the principal of Pinocchio’s school think after the episode of the fire? For twenty years we have not known anything more. Now we return to the scene of the crime. We all find ourselves at school, the one where Pinocchio was a child, a young boy, an adolescent. Twenty years later, all of us, the characters of this Collodian story that is Eatalya, agree as witnesses to a genealogical ceremony, a Sick Heart book, a belated collective initiation that tries to tell each other the cultural biography, the identity model , our personal national history against the backdrop of the Great History.

Roberto Corradino & Reggimento Carri | Teatro (IT)

Roberto Corradino & reggimento carri | teatro was born in October 2000 out of an idea by Roberto Corradino, actor and director, studying and working with Marco Martinelli/Ermanna Montanari (Teatro delle Albe/Ravenna), Mimmo Cuticchio, Cesare Ronconi (Teatro della Valdoca/Cesena), Maria Maglietta/Marco Baliani, Pippo Delbono, Federico Tiezzi/Sandro Lombardi, Eimuntas Nekrosius. reggimento carri | teatro works on contemporary dramaturgy in a long-term projects. We search the truth of actor, as singular or collective through the contemporary dramaturgy, trying to regain a theater show as a collective ritual, combining tradition and new languages in a simple and popular theater. reggimento carri | teatro staged Piaccainocchio, finalist at the “Premio Scenario Prize” in 2003; Perché ora affondo nel mio petto (Why I am now sinking in my chest) – 2005, taken from Pentesilea by von Kleist; La commedia al sangue (Raw comedy) – 2005, from the novel Di questa vita menzognera (Of this mendacious life) by Giuseppe Montesano, coproduced by the “Castel dei Mondi Festival”; Conferenza / Nudo e in semplice anarchia (Conference / Naked and in simple anarchy) coproduced by the “Es.Terni Festival 2008”, taken from Shakespeare’s Richard II. August 2009 saw the debut of Le Muse Orfane (The Orphan Muses) by M.M.Bouchard, coproduced by the “Castel dei Mondi Festival 2009” and “Officina Triangolo Scaleno Teatro/ Festival Teatri di vetro” 2009, the first in a trilogy on the family as a microcosm of social relations. In the 2011 produced Cuore (Heart. Like a drum in the night… from Edmondo De Amicis’ novel to the present day) for the 150° anniversary of Italy’s Unification (1861) with the patronage of Regione Puglia/Assessorato al Mediterraneo Cultura e Turismo and supported by Teatro Pubblico Pugliese in the context of the development actions of European Fund/P.O.R. FESR 2007 – 2013 for “Young theatre group” and Di cosa parliamo quando parliamo d’amore (What are we talking about when we talk about love), a staging project from Il paese lontano (The distant country) by Jean Luc Lagarce, supported by Teatro Kismet O.per.A., Alliance Francaise and Facè a facè/Words of France for Italian Scene 2011, in collaboration with PAV (Rome). Currently working on Cantiere Le braci/Project The Embers a project on the ancient greek tragedy and the mixed with contemporary material, autofictional writing and installative/performances. A tremendous project, a theatrical Bible dividided in seven chapters as the seven deadly sins about the sense of human earthlings and its presence on the Earth. In recent years he has been interested in participatory work with communities, from children to the elderly, in particular by linking creative work sites and site specific or renactment to the places crossed by the performances. From 2015 with Knownone or Roberto Corradino is dead, up to the projects with Altofest, Teatri di Bari / TeatroKismet OperA, up to the most recent works related to the theme of the holiday linked to tradition and the cycle of natural events, the performative forms have extended from the workshop tout court to the direct work on the territory with the communities of inhabitants. And therefore Skausche (Michele’s film), a hometheatre narration on the story of a young shepherd who committed suicide in the 70s, to CapuletiMontecchi zeroazero inspired by Romeo & Juliet, a workshop for boys from 6 to 13 years and for grandparents in the form of a football match for a square event, in which the whole city community is involved, up to the hometheatre works A steak by J.London (2017), Kankroukore or That night that my grandmother spoke like a crow (2016), Shakespearealacàrte (2016), sort of entertainment menu for pub audience, or the performances Come loose your dogs upon me (2017), a singing one person perfomance, or With foot on the ground walking performance for 15 spectators on the physical relationship with the ground and on the speciation of animal kingdoms, up to The only certain house (Altofest / Matera-Basilicata European Capital of Culture 2019) human traveling comedy for 25 spectators staged in a private house on personal memories and ancestral reconnection with the ancestors and the dead, inspired by Giordano Bruno and the theory of infinite worlds crossed with the personal story of the film Interstellar or Play the music Lucignolo / On all fear you like an itinerant alchemical work for 8 person, co-produced in 2021 with Verso Sud / Cultural ecosystem in the non-urban spaces of the Apulian countryside (Corato / Bari / Castel del Monte). The latest production, dramaturgically conceived for the spaces of a school building, focused on the educational model and on the self-fiction of an imaginary biography of the artist Pino Gelosi aka Pinocchio when from puppet he becomes human Diary of Pinocchio 20202065, winner of the Prize Tuttoteatro.com 2020, performance that invoveld the audience in the action.

Personal freedom and reason of state currently seem to be in conflict. The categories of what is necessary and proper are redefined day by day by each of us. Antigone deals with these and other questions to which it is difficult to give an unequivocal answer. For millennia, it has not ceased to question us. It speaks to us about women and men, war and reconciliation, communication and misunderstanding, and life and death. Ours is a very particular version of Sophocles’Antigone, far from the splendours of ‘state theatre’, reduced to a minimum, with only two performers sharing roles and, with roles, responsibilities, guilt, and destinies. A kind of ‘chamber tragedy’ designed mainly for flats and/or non-theatre spaces and for a small number of spectators. An intimate version of Sophoclean tragedy, where the conflicts are above all interior and the spectator is invited to spy closely as if through a lens, the laceration of conscience when faced with difficult choices. In our version of Antigone, there are no characters except in the sense of people, and there are no good or bad: the conflict is always between the human being with himself.

Barletti/Waas (DE)

Lea Barletti and Werner Waas have been working together since 1998, first in Rome, then in Lecce and since 2012 in Berlin. Together they have created numerous performances, founded a contemporary dramaturgy prize (Il Centro del Discorso), an experimental festival/workshop (K-now!) and collaborated with various artists from all over Europe. Since 2012 they have been working under the name Barletti/Waas, making themselves known mainly for their work on Peter Handke and, more recently, also by staging their texts. Since 2016 they have been collaborating continuously with TD Berlin. Their works, often conceived in two languages, show a particular interest in poetic language and the immediacy and transparency of theatrical discourse and have been seen in many theatrical and non-theatrical places, large and small, official and underground, in Germany and Italy. Since 2020 Barletti/Waas has been part of the pioneering use of the Haus der Statistik in Berlin, a space for multidisciplinary experimentation.

The audience is welcomed to their place at the table where photos, maps, documents and a song book are scattered and mate tea is being served. With their documentary performance “On the first night we looked at maps – Los Alemanes del Volga” the Argentinean-German artist couple Federico & Wenzel Vöcks de Schwindt invite their audience on both a historical and biographical journey. Following the Volga Germans who emigrated in the 18th century, it traces their passage from the German region of Hesse to Russia, and a hundred years later as they continued their path to the Americas. The performers confront themselves with fragments of past migration and the contradictions of family identity in an always shifting narrative of a couple searching for a queer heritage – and for a homeland that perhaps never existed.
Mainly in English, partly in Italian, German and Spanish.

Vöcks de Schwindt (DE)

The Argentinian and German artists Federico & Wenzel Vöcks de Schwindt have shared a partnership that extends from their private life to their artistic collaborations since 2014. Their joint works under the label Vöcks de Schwindt range from documentary and performative works to multilingual drama productions and music theatre. They are currently exploring questions of migrant identities, queer heritage, male tenderness and the performativity of objects. With “On the first night we looked at maps” Vöcks de Schwindt were selected in 2020 for the newcomers‘ platform of the Performing Arts Festival Berlin (Germany). Furthermore they were invited to perform the piece at the Furore Festival in Ludwigsburg (Germany), at the TD Berlin and at the WUK Theater Quartier in Halle/Saale (Germany).

A collective rhythm explosion! Antonino Talamo leads us in a morning, participatory drum circle. A rhythmic journey created for the People of Altofest, awakening collective energy through bodily percussion, activating our musical body. A performance workshop inspired by ‘Batuque Na Mao’, the Body Percussion Workshop that Antonino Talamo has summarised in a methodological publication. The method aims to foster the development of creative and expressive musical possibilities through the use of one’s body as a percussion instrument. Finding yourself in sound, in a collective ritual of a rhythmic explosion, becoming a world that plays, strikes and releases music.

Antonino Talamo (IT)

Musician, Percussionist, Instrumentalist for live and studio recordings, Teacher, and Pedagogue. He studied with Maestro Peppe Sannino, to perfect his skill in the Afro-Cuban musical styles (Mambo, Rumba, Mozambique, etc.) with instruments such as the congas, timbani, bongo, Guiro, Maracas and keyboards. He later perfects the Rumba style with Maestro Giovanni Imparato. In 1999 he studies the music of the Brazilian capoeira (with emphasis on the study of the berimbau), in order then to widen his skills in Afro-Brazilian percussions and in the characteristic styles of the Samba schools as well as the typical rhythms of the North West of Brazil (Samba Enredo, Samba Pagode, Samba Reggae, Timbalada, Maracatù de Baque Virado, and the more famous rhythms of the Candomblè etc. Played on all the traditional instruments with the typical techniques and pronunciation. He then starts to perform regularly on the stages of the reputed and famed clubs of Naples and its province and participates in the main jam sessions of the most significant musical events. He perfects the Pandeiro by playing and corresponding with Giovanni Coraggio, Gilson Silveira, Nicola Russo and more recently Nunzio Toscano. Studies and plays the Darbuka (Turkish and Arabic technique) as well as the Riq with Francesco Manna, Michele Maione, Luca Cioffi. He collaborates with the most noted belly dancers of Naples (Samara Flora de Caro, Sandy D’aly, Klemcy Salza).

A short journey into Altolfest’s last edition, the COVID year: back to pseudo-normality, ideas and meditations on creation, the space (both shared and domestic), the economy, the future.

Giuseppe Valentino (IT)

Giuseppe Valentino was born in 1978. He completed his studies in his home town before moving to Bologna. He left Italy for Zurich where he lived for 9 years working as director of photography and director of music videos. He moved to Cape Town, South Africa in 2006 to study English and Documentary Filmmaking at the Thupelo Institute in Woodstock, living and studying in one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods where the making of documentaries fits directly into the events related to the surrounding reality. He founded the production company
Ferula Film producing and directing a feature film entitled Xolo. Presented at the Black Star Film Festival, it won the prize for best actress and was part of the Orizzonti section of the
BiF&ST 2018 and at the 40th Villerupt Festival in France. With Ferula Film he produced ‘Senza Tempo’, a documentary in co-production with RaiCinema. In August 2019, he wrote and shot
a documentary on Leos Carax’s latest film, ‘Annette’ working between Bruxelles and Paris. Giuseppe Valentino lives and works in Puglia and he’s a freelance director and cinematographer.