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sonia biacchi

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signs and forms surprise and attract me, I register them in my mind, they leave traces, imprints to which I turn to draw my own personal architectures built for dancers' bodies.

they have common elements: purity of sign, broad field-view, essentiality and especially, the power of representation for a world of references of which I feel emotionally part.

from drawings I move onto their tridimensional realisation.

in order to be made into structure the drawing needs to be feasible, wearable, related with the space on the scene and the forms that are expected to be on the stage during the representation.

the realisation therefore takes place after careful consideration, during which I often modify or enrich the original design. although I always first make a primary tridimensional structure on a dummy, so as to try out proportions and fitness of the chosen materials, its life-size realisation often hides surprises.

I work uninterruptedly, because it is only after I have completed the realisation that I will know the static and formal results, and if the structure does not work it must be either corrected or disposed of. it takes all too much work to give up easily.

I believe that I have acquired a good knowledge on the yielding of a vast array of materials, but only experimentation can confirm or disprove the expected results. Sometimes I make the same model with different materials expecting different results on the stage, pliability and the possibility of formal changes during the movement.

Once the structure is approved and finished, experimentation is not over yet. What results will it yield when it is worn or brought by a dancer in the theatre? What relationship is there between it and and the other structures, light, music, space on the stage? How does the dancer feel and act towards it? All these questions are extremely important because they come to the core of the problems on stage: rhythm .

Noise-silence, light-darkness, movement-stillness, sonorous and luminous volumes, interferences with video projections, voice-sound. It is necessary to have a great orchestra director to bring to life a work that is between earth and sky. But, regrettably, how often can such a result be even neared?

my tridimensional plastic structures that wrap up dancers' bodies limit their movements and change their bodies. the movement must be related to the form of the structures producing mechanising and robot-like effects.

a primary source of inspiration in my first structures for the body was oskar schlemmer, major bauhaus teacher, fundamentally with its "triadic ballet" figures.

ever since the 20th century, theoreticians and artists in the show and dancing business have studied and experimented the substitution of the actor with a marionette or a mechanical structure, so as to question the absolute protagonism of actors in naturalist theatre. by means of yet unsurpassed experiments on the stage, they have contributed to deconstruct the founding elements of the naturalist theatre in favour of a new one. many names must be remembered: theoreticians and forerunners like henrich von kleist, walter benjamin and artists, as well as men of theatre like craig, depero, leger, klee, exter, jarrj, mejerchol'd, schlemmer, picasso...

nowadays experiments continue on other assumptions of knowledge and experience. of all, it is enough to think of the momix.

I would be glad to add a personal contribution to this distinguished trend of research.

often, in front of one of my costumes left still on a dummy, without movement and therefore only with its own material and form, someone touches it and asks: "sonia, of what material is it made?" it is always an instinctive pleasure for me to see how surprised every time such mr. somebody is, even if he has known me for a long time.

two of sonia biacchi's famous costumes have been purchased by pierre cardin and are still exhibited in his paris museum.

what can be said, at the end… this is my latest creation, but not for long…