Marco D’Agostin
Pearl Calleja, Lidia Caricasole, Tara Dalli, Felix Deepen, Nik Folini, Jérémie Lafon, Lotte La Haye, Keith Micallef, Simon Riccardi-Zani, Amber Van Veen
Florinda Camilleri
Holly Knowles
Tom Van Malderen
LSKA
Marco D’Agostin, Davide Rigodanza
ŻfinMalta
VAN
Italian Cultural Institute of Valletta
[IT]
Prove generali per un varietà nucleare, musical modificato geneticamente, una performance seduttiva con le peggiori intenzioni. OKOKOK vuole conquistare il record di sguardi fissi, infrangere il più duro dei cuori, competere con se stessa e con ogni altra coreografia mai vista e danzata prima.
Lavoro creato su commissione di Paolo Mangiola per il corpo di ballo della compagnia nazionale maltese ŻfinMalta, OKOKOK prende spunto dal materiale coreografico di Everything is ok, il pluripremiato assolo di Marco D’Agostin. Nell’approfondire la ricerca sull’entertaining come forma di una specifica relazione tra performer e spettatore, OKOKOK testa la possibilità di una coreografia irresistibile, sfacciatamente frontale, iper-citazionista, continuamente tesa a squarciare se stessa e i danzatori che la eseguono per rivelare il silenzio assordante nel quale tutti ci muoviamo quando cerchiamo di compiacere qualcuno.
[EN]
General rehearsal for a nuclear variety show; a genetically modified musical; a seductive choreography with the worst intentions. OKOKOK wants to conquer the record of stared stares, break the hardest of hearts, compete with itself and with every other choreography ever seen and danced before.
In this new work created for ŻfinMalta, Marco D’Agostin extends his research around entertainment as a specific form of relationship between performer and spectator (with Everything is ok, which toured Europe for over 6 years, and Best Regards, his recent tribute show to Nigel Charnock/DV8). OKOKOK tests the possibility of an irresistible, unabashedly frontal, hyper-citationist choreography, continually striving to tear itself and the dancers who perform it apart, to reveal the deafening silence in which we all move when we try to entertain someone.
OKOKOK, by international artist and performer Marco D’Agostin, opened the second weekend of ZfinDays 2023, with a slap in the face. The piece is a stern, powerful and beautifully composed provocation, well representing the qualities which made this multitalented artist popular in the high circles of contemporary culture, including the Biennale di Venezia. Like a Shumon Basar of performative arts, D’Agostin bombards the audience with a seamless sequence of iconic movements and refrains revealing the most callous spirit of the entertainment industry, and of our consumeristic society more in general, spanning from Ryanair flights announcements to Heather Parisi’s dance moves. The piece brings to mind one publication of Basar in particular, The Age of Earthquakes (2015, co-authored with Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist), not only for its sardonic, borderline-cynical approach to ‘the extreme present’, but also for its the merciless pace, constantly on the verge of spiraling out control. The resulting uneasiness triggers a greatly needed moment of reflection on the hyper-spectacular age we live in and succeeds in revealing ‘the deafening silence in which we all move when we try to entertain someone’.
2023
February 17th, première, Valletta Campus Theatre, La Valletta (MT)
February 24th, Valletta Campus Theatre, La Valletta (MT)
Photo credits: Lindsey Bahia, Craft Mark, Camille Fenech