EM+ | Emanuele Rosa & Maria Focaraccio
EM+ represents the project that combines the choreographic practices of Emanuele Rosa and Maria Focaraccio (IT/DE). Emanuele and Maria started their co-authorial journey in 2020, although their paths have been crossing on several artistic occasions since 2008. Their work stems from the archives of classical and contemporary dance (as common training and professional background), meets the languages of the visual and performing art and constantly opens up to collaborations with several artists.
EM+ was born in 2022 as a container of their choreographic practices: E _ manuele, M _ aria, "plus" the many collaborators of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Focusing on the diversities, fragilities and vulnerabilities of each body and person, Emanuele and Maria’s work digs into the theme of identity and gender, generally treating it with irony and lightness. What is the essence of one’s expression? Which intentions lie behind actions or movements? In attempting to answer these questions, Emanuele and Maria seek the courage and the honesty to admit and accept one’s own identity through physicality and movement.
The first work "HOW TO _ just another Boléro" (2021) is the winning project of Call from the Aisle 2021, selected at the Vetrina della giovane danza d’autore eXtra 2021 and at dFeria 2023 (San Sebastián, Spain). EM+'s second work, all you need is (2022), received the Audience award at Les Lendemains Qui Dansent 2024, the 1st Prize Award at TWAIN Direzioni Altre 2022 Award and got selected at Vetrina della giovane danza d’autore eXtra 2022. Emanuele and Maria are associate artists of C&C Company, co-producer of their works together with S'ALA / spazio per artist+ ; EM+'s works are presented in numerous festivals in Italy and abroad (Spain, Portugal, Greece and France). In 2023, Emanuele and Maria have been selected as artists of ResiDance - action of Network Anticorpi XL and for the internationalization project of Italian performing arts Crossing the sea. They have been also invited to the section Visiting Artists Programme of the European project Big Pulse, as part of the Festival Tanec Praha, Prague in June 2023. In 2024 EM+ is selected in the trilateral project for international choreographic residencies (IT/DE/FR) Étape Danse.
I believe our imaginations - particularly the parts of our imaginations that hold what we most desire, what brings us pleasure, what makes us scream yes - are where we must seed the future, turn toward justice and liberation, and reprogram ourselves to desire sexually and erotically empowered lives.
Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
Our artistic journey draws deep inspiration from the text Pleasure Activisme by Adrienne Maree Brown, in which the author shows how pleasure and desire can be powerful tools for social and political transformation, as they push to challenge norms, forms and systems of oppression. We believe in pleasure as an act of resistance and strive to implement this philosophy in our body and choreographic practices, seeking pleasure
through movement and eschewing obsolete and normative patterns enacted by those dance techniques intended to discipline the body through pain, suffering and deprivation. With the project amən, in particular, we aim to question the imposition of the rigid patterns of behavior that regulate gender expression and identity, through choreographic practices of de-constructing the representations related to gestures stereotypically linked to masculinity and femininity. We wish, in this way, to activate practices of listening and connection, centered on the pursuit of desire, freedom of expression and the pleasure that flows from it, so as to trigger forms of change and resistance against those normative systems that oppress diversity.
Pleasure is not one of the spoils of capitalism. It is what our bodies, our human systems, are structured for; it is the aliveness and awakening, the gratitude and humility, the joy and celebration of being miraculous.
Adrienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good