BODY SWEATS (for Elsa)
Choreography Giorgia Lolli
With Vittoria Caneva, Elena Grappi, Maria Chiara Vitti, Giorgia Lolli
Costumes Eva-Liis Lidenburg, Sara Lando (tiger)
Sound work Sebastian Kurtén
Dramaturgy Piero Ramella
Production Nexus Factory
with the support of the Emilia-Romagna Region, and the Municipality of Bologna
with the support of MiC and SIAE, within program “Per Chi Crea”, supportER - Rete Anticorpi Emilia-Romagna, Ira Institute, Operaestate/CSC Centro di Residenza del Veneto - Vene.Re, Piemonte dal Vivo in the frame of Residenze Coreografiche Lavanderie a Vapore, I Teatri di Reggio Emilia, HOME 2025 / Dance Gallery Perugia, TAIKE Arts Promotion Center Finland, City of Espoo Culture Committee, SKR Finnish Cultural Foundation, Festival Moving in November, El Graner (Barcelona), Nouveau Grand Tour (IIC Paris and Le Gymnase CNDC, Roubaix)
within LANDING, a project supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and carried out by Santarcangelo Festival, in collaboration and with support of the Italian Cultural Institute in Oslo
within the network R.O.M. (Residencies On the Move) for Reykjavik Dance Festival, at the invitation of Santarcangelo Festival, in partnership with La Balsamine (Belgio), le joli collectif – Théâtre l’Aire Libre (Francia), Théâtre Prospero and Théâtre Periscope (Canada)
the network R.O.M. is supported by the European Union through the Creative Europe programme, by the Conseil des arts de Montréal and by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec
realized with the support of MOVIN'UP SPETTACOLO – PERFORMING ARTS 2025/2026, promoted by MIC Ministry of Culture - General Directorate for Performing Arts and GAI Association for the Circuit of the Young Italian Artists together with Puglia Culture - Apulia Region, with GA/ER Association Young Artists of Emilia Romagna and with Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo
BODY SWEATS (for Elsa) is an homage to Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927), an avant-garde poet and artist, one of the most radical figures of the Dada movement. The title refers to the collection of poems Body Sweats, the baroness's erotic, proto-feminist, proto-queer and proto-punk manifesto. This gives rise to a performance that intertwines dance, poetry readings, and physical training, using sweat as a means of navigating fatigue and pleasure. On stage, four performers construct a collage of dance and textual materials: poems, athletic gestures, ironic tributes to an artist who transformed the body into a field of freedom. With BODY SWEATS (for Elsa), we look at the irreverent strength of the Dadaist artist and reactivate it in a contemporary, energetic and undisciplined form, where the body sweats, reads, dances, quotes, desires and takes a stand.
Love letters between friends and lovers.
Waterless aqua aerobics in tiger-striped leotards.
A poem for the Baroness. A split, in her honour.
Dada(umpa).
✮ Danza contemporanea e dadaismo. Conversazione con Michele Pascarella, Gagarin Magazine ITA
"By decorating and moving their bodies in an awkward, ironic, sensual, chaotic, and solemn assemblage, Lolli and Vittoria Caneva, Elena Grappi, and Maria Chiara Vitti, give us the Baroness's simulacrum of a complex, contradictory, and ever-changing modern identity, reflected in the present."
"BODY SWEATS (for Elsa) by Giorgia Lolli stands out as a work that uses the figure of Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven as an archetypal device to interrogate the relationship between body, desire, and performative freedom. [...] without giving in to nostalgic references. Instead, Lolli constructs an eccentric, excessive, and extravagant contemporary performative lexicon in which irony, desire, and effort coexist in the same space, transforming the body into a living archive of feminist practices and forms of everyday resistance."
✮ Federica Patti, Art News Italia
"On stage, four performers inhabit a space that seems suspended between a living room, an imaginary gym, and a Dadaist cabaret. Leopard-print dresses, chairs, exhibited postures, a split offered as a votive gesture: BODY SWEATS (for Elsa) constructs a collage that does not separate thought from the body, poetry from training, eroticism from play. The dedication to Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven thus also becomes a way to summon an eccentric female genealogy, capable of sabotaging the composed forms of art and transforming stage presence into an act of disobedience."
✮ Piera Raimondi, Emilia Romagna Cultura (videointervista ITA)
"The performers construct an image of free (or rather, liberated) femininity, sensual and full of vitality. Their bodies occupy the space without fear of being excessive, loud, or out of place, in a celebration of color, movement, and self-determination."
✮ Cecilia Salerno, ateatro.it
"A completely occupied white platform on which the performers play and meet on disconnected sounds... A sensual Jane Fonda-style stretching for a study of the body, art, and unconventionality."
2026
✮ in Helsinki soon, stay tuned ✮
26-27 November ERT Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione, Bologna
8-9 July, premiere in Santarcangelo Festival
19 June, pre-premiere in IRA Festival, Soverato (CZ)
14 June, pre-premiere in Umbria Danza Festival, Perugia
25 May - 3 June residency in Lavanderia a Vapore
2-7 March residency in Operaestate, Bassano del Grappa
13-23 February R.O.M. (Residencies On the Move) Reykjavik Dance Festival (IS), at the invitation of Santarcangelo Festival
12-17 January residency at Teatri di Reggio Emilia, in the frame of supportER - Network Anticorpi Emilia-Romagna
2025
16-24 December residency HOME, Dance Gallery, Perugia
1-14 December residency in Graner, Barcelona (in the frame of LANDING, a project supported by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and organized by Santarcangelo Festival)
5 September pitching and performing at IRA Open Studios
31 March - 1 May residency Nouveau Grand Tour, awarded by the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris, at Le Gymnase CNDC (Roubaix)