Teresa Vittucci is a Vienna born artist who is based in Zurich since 2015. Her practice is rooted in the field contemporary dance performance and investigates feminist and queer perspectives on pop culture, history, and religion. Subversive jokes are always part of the process, humour being an essential aspect of her work. Besides her extensive solo work, she also collaborates with other artists including Colin Self, Marilú Mapengo Namoda, Annina Machaz, Simone Aughterlony, Nils A. Lange, Michael Turinsky and Claire V. Sobottke, Melanie Jame Wolf and Theater HORA.
Teresa was awarded the recognition prize by the City of Zurich for her work as an outstanding performer 2018 and the Swiss Dance Prize for the first part of her trilogy HATE ME, TENDER in 2019. In 2022 she created RIDE on invitation by Centre Pompidou and Leopoldine Turbat as a response to the important feminist work of avantgarde artist and filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger. SACRE! - a collaboration with Annina Machaz and Theater HORA - premiered the same year. In fall of 2023 Teresa was invited by Deutsches Theater Berlin to revisit her solo, the result HATE ME, TENDER_revisited is part of the repertoire and regularly performed in Berlin. In March 2024 Teresa will premiere the third work of her trilogy at Tanzhaus Zürich.
Show
Teresa Vittucci, Colin Self
Trilogy In Praise of Vulnerability: DOOM
For the first time, Teresa Vittucci will present her trilogy In Praise of Vulnerability in its entirety. The works HATE ME, TENDER, DOOM, and SANE SATAN will all be shown at Tanzhaus Zurich within the same week. A rare opportunity to (re)experience Vittucci’s work in one concentrated, explosive dose.
In DOOM, the second part of the trilogy In Praise of Vulnerability, Teresa Vittucci and composer and performer Colin Self explore the origins of femininity as established in Greek mythology and the biblical Book of Genesis with the characters Eve and Pandora. Both are portrayed in their narratives as the first women in the world. In Christian-Jewish and other Abrahamic societies, their stories continue to have an impact today. They lay the foundations for what is understood, shaped and limited as feminine.
Eve and Pandora, whose stories are still read today as cautionary tales about the dangers of female knowledge, shape the understanding of femininity and the position of women, as well as all those assigned to this gender, in social structures. The play examines these figures, their parallel fates, the way they are told, and the effects these narratives have.
In a combination of poetry and humour characteristic of Vittucci, the two performers venture into the field of uncertain knowledge that these stories convey. Who gets hurt when female curiosity encounters patriarchal structures? And what risk does the decision to look anyway entail?
Following the event on April 9, there will be a public discussion between Teresa Vittucci and Dr. phil. Andrea Zimmermann, research assistant and project manager for ‘Gender and Diversity Monitoring in Cultural Institutions’.
In cooperation with artofintervention.ch
Trilogy
See HATE ME, TENDER on April 7.
See SANE SATAN on April 12.
- 16+
Choreography, Voice, Performance Teresa Vittucci
Music, Voice, Performance Colin Self
Scenography Anna Wohlgemuth
Light Design Thomas Giger
Dramaturgical Advice Benjamin Egger
Dramaturgical advisor Tanzhaus Zürich Marc Streit
Production Management Kira Koplin / GROUNDWORKERS
Production management trilogy Laeticia Blättler (Moin Moin Productions)
Administration Karin Erdmann
Diffusion Jérôme Pique
Production OH DEAR! Zürich und OH DEAR productions
Coproduction Tanzhaus Zürich, Dampfzentrale Bern, Arsenic Lausanne, Théâtre St-Gervais Genève, Art Stations Foundation CH, Sophiensæle Berlin and WUK Wien
Supported by City of Zurich Culture, Department of Culture of the Canton of Zurich, Pro Helvetia – Swiss Arts Council, Migros Cultural Percentage, Ernst Göhner Foundation and Cultural Department of the City of Vienna
Tour supported by Migros Cultural Percentage
Special Thanks to Theater Neumarkt and Muzeum Susch
Photos Byron Gago
Colin Self (b. 1987, Oregon, USA) is an artist, composer, and puppeteer based between Brooklyn, New York and Berlin, Germany. They create music, performances, and new systems for interfacing with the human spirit, across a spectrum between the living and deceased. As many of their practices revolve around the temporary assembly of communities, their work envelops collaborative and dialogical experiments into play. Self has been running XOIR since 2013, an alternative modality of group singing, and co-founded TIAPS, a performance school in 2022, with their collaborator Monica Mirabile. Their most recent commissions include Where The Souls Go (2024), a play commissioned by the New Theater Hollywood, Kompass (2023), a trilogy composed for the Hannover State Opera, and Tip the Ivy (2022), an opera that premiered at Performance Space NY in 2022. Last year, they were a resident artist at Callie’s Berlin and will be an artistic fellow at La Becque in Autumn 2024. Their expanded third record, respite and levity for the nameless ghost in crisis, comes out February 13th on RVNG Intl.