Chiara Bersani Italy
Family Tree is a project that branches out from the body. In Family Tree, the body is seen as the point of contact between past and present, the root that connects us to the world, the only trace left in the time by our ancestors and our history.
We are mosaics of events, we can only reconstruct our memories and order the fragments of our image through the others and their eyes.
At the root of the work there is a reflection developed in 2009:
“I was born on the 9th of November 1984, suffering from a medium / severe form of osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic alteration that makes the skeletal system more fragile and hinder their development. For this reason, I have undergone several operations that have left inevitable traces on my body. Following the scars on my skin, I can rebuild my autobiography. For each sign corresponds to a date, a place, precise sequence of memories. If I consider my life through this journey, I find myself as the protagonist of a long performance whose beginning is to be found in its genetic root.”
These words were the starting point for the dialogue with dancer / choreographer Riccardo Buscarini and the performer / visual artist Matteo Ramponi.I asked them to call into play their own bodies, stories, and visions to respond to my concept and to create works around this idea. Each of us has taken the direction of the work exploring and sharing each other's languages and aesthetics. Each of the fragments we have created is one’s personal answer to the starting point.
Chiara Bersani
Chiara Bersani
CHIARA BERSANI
Chiara Bersani, born in 1984, approached the profession of actress/performer in 2003. Until 2007, she formed herself while working for Lenz Rifrazioni. In 2007 she started to collaborate with Alessandro Sciarroni, through the creation of Coropoceleste, a cultural association for theatre’s production and research. The collaboration with Sciarroni resulted in the performance Your Girl, finalist at the International Performance Prize (2007) and still on tour in the main Italian and European cities. In 2008 she directed her first performance, Dearest, finalist at the Scenario Prize. In 2010 she was selected to participate to the advanced professional performers’ course directed by Rodrigo Garcia and produced by Biennale di Venezia.
In 2012, after a study lasted three years, her first important work, the theatre dance performance Family Tree, debuted. The performance won the prize Prospettiva Danza 2011 and was finalist at My Dream Contest. In the same year she won a scholarship for the contemporary dramaturgy school Urgenze. In 2013 she debuted as performer in El Sur de Europa. Dias de Amor Dificiles with the Spanish company La Tristura.
This year her first film as a filmmaker, Miracle Blade, will also be presented to the public.
Thanks to the grant Movin’up, that she was awarded in 2015, she had the opportunity to participate, as an observer of creative processes, to the last performance of the choreographer Jérôme Bel, Gala. She also supervised the recruitment and training of the Italian casts (Biennale di Venezia 2014 and Dro, 2015) for the same performance.
In autumn 2015 she will take part, as one of the main actors, at the creation of the performance David è morto, by the Babilonia Teatri company.
Chiara Bersani is the winner of national prize Prospettiva Danza Teatro, 2011, Padua.
PHOTO: Remo Ramponi