Augusto Corrieri
Quartet (for Anna Akhmatova)
This is a playful exploration of the idea that performance is not what takes place on the stage, but rather what happens in the minds of the spectators. Based on an accident that took place at La Scala opera house in Italy in 1913, Quartet is a dance and theatre performance that revolves around a simple premise: each of its four components (the movement, the object, the music, the words) is performed alone, one after the other. Never presented as a whole, the audience is invited to connect each part, slowly imagining and piecing together a performance that may or may not exist.
Quartet is an ongoing investigation, which questions how much performance is about “giving” and “communicating” to an audience, seeking instead ways in which the audience, by the act of watching, are complicit in the making of the performance.
Augusto Corrieri is a choreographer, performer and writer working in the field of experimental dance-theatre. For the last 6 years he has presented new performance works in the UK and abroad, alone and in collaboration with companies Deer Park and Propeller. His work focuses on ways of staging absence within the context of Western theatre, a structure whose hierarchy still haunts the ways we view and make performance today. He is currently researching a 3-part performance entitled Continuous Project, in which 10 members of the public learn and rehearse a dance piece via the You Tube website, before then presenting it live.
Funded by Arts Council England. Developed with BAC, The Nightingale Theatre, and the B-Theatre Pilot programme. Supported by the Basement, Arts Production South East.