Kick-off: destroying the potentiality

Villa Simonetta, Verbania

Fall 2024

During their residency period in Verbania, the dance artists Asya Ashman and Therese Bendjus will deepen their performative research on the concept of “destruction” understood as destruction of matter and movement, as well as an exploration of hidden potentials. The project Kick Off: Destroying the Potentiality questions what lies at the origin of grief for the loss of a memory, of a place, of a cause. Is there anything that can be totally erased? How does pain translate into our bodies and how can we explore it through movement? The artists’ practice will experiment with the performing of destructive acts on a smaller scale. Laying the foundations of their thinking in the structural violence perpetrated on social and ecological level, the artists will investigate the Verbania area through the population's life stories at different historical moments and by reading the Val d’Ossola landscape, in particular for the extraction of marble and granite used in monuments and memorials. The project will open the doors of Villa Simonetta with a movement and experience-sharing workshop (advance booking required) on October 20th afternoon. On the 30th of October, there will be a final presentation at the Atelier of Casa Ceretti at 19:00, in in Via Roma 42, Verbania. Creation and production by: Asya Ashman e Therese Bendjus / Bando Nouveau Grand Tour 2024 supported by: Institut français Italia (IFI), Ambasciata di Francia in Italia, MiC, Office franco-allemand pour la Jeunesse I Deutsch-Französisches Jugendwerk / Project previously supported by: MOTHERLODE Festival (HZT, Berlin).

Asya Ashman and Therese Bendjus share their performative research in the Berlinese artistic panorama, in which they trained at the HZT – Inter-University Center for Dance in Berlin. They both work with performance as authors and interpreters. Asya precedently studied at the Fine Arts department of the University of Hertfordshire and developed her artistic practice at the intersection of dance, film and socially engaged activities. Therese was before in medical studies and now works with the concept of measurable and diagnosable, aiming to access spaces where people can feel free to be vulnerable.