At the Festival dell’Amore a reflection on violence against women
with the show “Tell me that you love me” by the MOTUS Company
The “uncomfortable dance” of the MOTUS Company is once again involved in a national campaign to denounce what might be called a massacre. With the show “Tell me that you love me”, to be performed at Triennale di Milano on the 8th of June at 9:15 p.m. the Company denounces feminicide. In Italy every two and a half days a woman dies and in the majority of cases, the homicide is committed by a family member or by a person with who the victim has had a relationship.
Analyzing the reasons and the psychological mechanisms that lead men to claim power of life or death over their partner, MOTUS bring on the scene the decrease in the perception of reality, derived from cushioning of sense, inability in understanding the real value of things, affecting the contemporary fragmented society.
In a context in which affective relationships are domined by precariousness, the search for love becomes a spasmodic chase to achieve the possession of the other, as the only possible solution to one’s own inner conflicts. So violence against women becomes “one of the crucial social mechanisms through which women are forced into a subordinate position with respect to men”, as stated by the UN General Assembly.
Therefore, in MOTUS show the love relationships are surrogates for missing certainty, used to replace existential needs which cannot be satisfied in other ways. On the scene different kinds of loneliness take turn, from the need of tenderness to exhibitionism, from the spasmodic search for a partner, to the violence of everyone-against-all. But, above all, the loneliness of women who suffer violence (6.788,000, only in Italy, according to 2015 Istat data) dominates the scene . If sometimes women are incapable of denouncing their executioners, too often they are not sufficiently protected when they find the strenght to report their captors. The same loneliness felt by Giordana Di Stefano, who dreamed to become a professional dancer. For this reason, she contacted the MOTUS Company several times, asking for an audition. Unfortunately Giordana never did that audition. She was killed in Nicolosi on the 7th of October 2015 by her ex-boyfriend, that she had already repeatedly reported for stalinking. After Giordana’s death, MOTUS decided to launch a national campaign against violence with the aim to raise awareness about women’s rights.
“Tell me that you love me” is performed by Martina Agricoli, André Alma, Ilaria Fratantuono, Roberta Morello and Mattia Solano, on choreographies created by Simona Cieri, and directed by Rosanna and Simona Cieri. The show is the result of the collaboration with the Neapolitan composer Daniele Sepe, one of the most prestigious authors of the Italian scene, who created the original music of the show.