MANUELA BACHMANN BERNASCONI
I think every activity, every profession, is ultimately a pretext for a personal journey. The purpose of my work lies in the possibility to question myself, to confront my resistances and limits. It’s through engagement with my daily lives, with apparent repetition, that I uncover the transformative potential within each gesture.
Art and dance are no different from other activities: they are paths that help explore who I am and redefine my relationship with the world. It’s about how I do it—the quality of presence I bring to each action.
The journey is one of constant discovery, with every step, if deeply listened to, revealing a new inner landscape.
I was born in Fribourg in 1982, Switzerland. I have Sicilian, Greek, German and northern Italian origins. I have been dancing since I was five years old. I started working as a dancer in Italy and France, between musical and contemporary dance projects. Between 2010 and 2011 I met Gaga and Ohad Naharin's work in Israel, in Tel Aviv. It was a transformative encounter. The same year, in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland, I met my husband Felix-this encounter was even more transformative.
For the last 12 years I have been working with him. Today we can count more than 20 creations together and many creative processes. Our reflections encompass the performing arts, cinema, site-specific creations, documentary films, archiving projects, the organisation of festivals and meetings for socio-cultural reflection and transmission, the management of spaces for artistic and cultural research, pedagogical proposals, and tools for the development and valorisation of the independent scene.
We have 4 children pushing us to go deeper in understanding the complexity and organicity of reality.
In 2016 we moved to the lower town of Fribourg and with some friends we founded Xocolat, an association for the mobility of creativity.
Now we live between Ticino, a small antique town called Bedigliora, and Fribourg.
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CREATIVE LINES & INTERDEPENDENCES
ZWEI AKTE
2024
In collaboration with Felix Bachmann Quadros, and following an initial performance commissioned in 2019 by Bera Romairone, this new video project accompanies Mauricio Kagel’s musical composition. After years of reflection and exploration of identity and gender duality through various performances, this proposal does not aim to break conventions or shed masks often deemed obsolete. Instead, it seeks to recover and celebrate what we wish to preserve.
The resulting creation embraces slowness, the humor found in certain gestures, the relationship with materials, colors, spaces, and feminine legacies—described by a friend as “distinctly Italian.” It highlights the power of intimacy and the magical interplay between feminine and masculine energies.
The film was screened during an evening titled Drei Akte as part of the Oggi Musica festival at the LAC Studio in Lugano in November 2024, accompanying a live performance by Bera Romairone (saxophone) and Valerio Lisci (harp). The version accessible via this link is set to an interpretation by Michael Riessler and Brigitte Sylvestre.
DEVENIR PAYSAGE
2024
This choreographic work emerges from a creative dialogue with artist Alexandra Roussopoulos, inspired by her series of paintings titled "Movimento," created during her residency at Casa Fondazione Atelier Bedigliora. This collaboration translates the fluidity and dynamism of her visual art into a performative language. The choreography integrates into Roussopoulos' exhibition as a series of short performative interventions and a video installation. Through movement, I explore the themes of flow and its limits, the limits between things and layers present in her work, offering a kinetic response to the painted paysages.
Devenir Paysage has been presented on September 28, 2024 at Casa Fondazione Atelier Bedigliora and included in my last creation BUCCE.
Watch the film created for the installation in collaboration with Felix Bachmann Quadros.
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TRES ACTOS
2024
TRES ACTOS explores the dialogue between harp, saxophone, and electronic music, embodied through the language of movement. This interdisciplinary performance, based on Luis Naón’s composition, features Bera Romairone on saxophone, Valerio Lisci on harp, and myself as a dancer and choreographer. In the piece each instrument, including the electronic component, contributes to a dynamic interplay. The choreography serves as a medium through which the electronic soundscapes merge with the live instruments, creating a unique synergy amplifying and reflecting the sound, making the electronic layer palpable and visually present.
Tres Actos was featured in a program titled Drei Akte, alongside Zwei Akte by Mauricio Kagel. For this, I collaborated with Felix Bachmann Quadros to create a film. Both creations were showcased in November 2024 during the Oggi Musica festival at Teatro Studio, LAC Lugano, Switzerland.
FAKE
2019-2024
FAKE was initiated by Bera Romairone, a friend and great saxophonist, from a score by Mauricio Kagel entitled Zwei Akte. I let myself be invaded by the two characters proposed by Kagel and their inverted striptease, creating a stand-up dance performance with audience live video participation.​
On the trail of a primordial FAKE identity, navigating through layers of makeup and wigs, Maria Soledad, accompanied by an alter ego on the saxophone, unravels lies and shames modesty. She balances in a ritual with dreamlike or mythological boundaries, shaping frequencies and movement, dissolving notes and body.
FAKE reflects on the concepts of identity, masks, the terrain of uncertainty and truth, and our desperate desire for love and acceptance.
Have a look to the teaser.
Watch full performance here.
Last call done on the 30th of November at Tour Vagabonde Fribourg Switzerland
ABB
2024
Short in situ dance performance co-created with Sophie Claire Annen for sculptor Gabriela Spector and her exhibition at Quartiere Maghetti, Lugano.
Watch the video by Felix Bachmann Quadros
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BUCCE
2024
Closing a cycle of pièces on the theme of femininity, pregnancy, motherhood and the transmission of life, after GIVEINDIVEIN and MMITARI, BUCCE explores the "relevailles", the period of rising from childbirth and what follows. It takes its cue from Simone Weil's "La personne et le sacré" and passages from Annick de Souzennelle's "Le symbolisme du corps humain", to search in the primordial structure of the human body, in the intrinsic symbols that its structure conceals, and in the generational transition and relationship, to approach and welcome the most mysterious part of the human condition. BUCCE and its creative universe unmask certain taboos linked to motherhood, death and the transmission of life, and shed light on the female body in transformation, including old age.
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December 2024 | rassegna HOME Teatro Foce Lugano Switzerland, accompanied by the external perspective of Sophie Annen, the collaboration with Felix Bachmann Quadros, the lighting expertise by Marzio Picchetti, and the audio technique by Augusto Bachmann Bonelli.
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Read Giorgio Thoeni's revue here.
TOUTES LES SAISONS SONT PROPICES
2023-26 in creation
With Wyna Giller, singer and voice and breathing trainer, and Gaël Kyriakidis, we are working on a collective training to stimulate and keep operational the 'rage' device, an explosive reflex specifically developed for the survival of the soul, love, body and human being.
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Watch a video extract of a 1st study
Will be premiered in 2026 at Tour Vagabonde Fribourg and Théâtre de l'Arbanel, Treyvaux, Switzerland.
MMITARI
2022
Created and performed during my forth pregnancy and through the death of my grand-mother, in collaboration with Léna Sophia Bagutti, Coco den Blanken, Cedric Blaser, Arthur Holliger, Felix Bachmann Quadros, Fiona Todd and Jacob Logos
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You can find here a full length video performance.
Next venues | 16.06.24 11h Fondazione Casa Atelier Bedigliora Ticino CH | 17.06.24 Teatro di Banco Ticino CH
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husks layers of a patience
manifests of what gives in
succumbs
strips itself of obsolete crutches
and remains fearlessly dismembers
and becomes naked
GIVEINDIVEIN
2021
Choreographic line for three women dancers, created at Studio X, Fribourg, during a 12 days residency, with Léna Sophia Bagutti, Maude Chaubert, Manon Chenaille.
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Watch an extract of the performance here.
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COUCHES DANS LE POÈME D'UN OGRE
2021
Commissioned by Medium Sans gallery in Geneva, a performance from the pandemic lockdown, freely woven into the verses of Pierre Voélin, a poem dedicated in 1991 by the poet from Fribourg. The performance was filmed by Felix Bachmann Quadros, my husband, and live streamed from our bedroom, while children where watching a cartoon in the livingroom.
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Watch the performance.
BESTIOLES
2018
A short site specific dance performance co-created with Sarah Avellini, filmed and edited by Felix B.Q. during the opening for the exhibition Microsculpture by Levon Biss at the Nouveau Musée Bienne.
An important selection of the photographer's latest work, in which each image exhibited is a composite of around 10.000 individual photographs. Biss worked in collaboration with the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, selecting only a number of insects out of hundreds of thousands of specimens.
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Watch the performance.
TU JOUES? GIOCHI?
2018-2024
This is a pedagogical project that allows me to value small, light, simple things and look for the playful spirit in them.
The first version was created with choreographic material by Gabriela Leite Lima, Arnaud Blondel, Johanna Rosenstein, Pauline De Laet, Dmitro Grinov and evolved into a version for two dancers, with Viola Poggiali, Léna Sophia Bagutti and Sophie Claire Annen.
We take it to schools and urban and intimate festivals.
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Watch a teaser.
LET ME SWELL
2018
This performance was commissioned by the Belluard Bollwerk Festival, as part of a project by Blitz group and their Global Institute of Solitude.
I took the opportunity to do a creation process with my brother, Sir Taki, a great visual artist.
We created one of the strangest performances I have ever performed, sinking into the theme of liminality without fear of creating despondency in the audience and ourselves
The performance lasted 15 minutes and we repeated it non-stop for about ten times per night. At the beginning of the performance I took a shower: I remember that an old gentleman I often met in town was there among the spectators, and he had sat right on my stool inside the shower. As a matter of fact, we took a shower together. A special intimacy was created between us, which resurfaced every time I passed him at the market or on the bus.
FRAGIL
2017
Using a mask created in collaboration with Felix Bachmann Quadros and master mask maker Andrea Cavarra for Solo Bêtes d'Amour, I had the opportunity to contribute to the music video for Shainy Attakaran’s song Fragil.
Both pregnant with baby boys born just seven months later, only a few days apart, that day was an intense moment of connection between us and with the stunning landscapes and energy of certain spot in the Sopraceneri region in Ticino.
Watch the video at this link.
SOLO BÊTES D'AMOUR
2017
A choreographic and textual solo, avoiding the relationship between dance and music.
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It has been an intensive solo process realised in collaboration with Nuria Prazak, Francesca Sproccati and Felix Bachmann Quadros, and thanks to Semira, a snout mask created by Felix and Andrea Cavarra. The mask was used as a tool for choreographic writing and then omitted in the staging. The text speaks of absence and vital tension and was written during my third pregnancy under a spell of mysterious falling in love.
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Watch here part of the creation process.
And if you are curious, find here a documentary about snoutmasks.
With the same snoutmask I danced for Fragil, videoclip of a song by Shainy Attakarnan, directed and filmed by Felix Bachmann Quadros.
Read a short review by G. Thoeni
DRIVE IN
2016
Written by Felix Bachmann Quadros and choreographed in collaboration with Francesca Sproccati, DRIVE IN is a visionary performance in which the audience watches directly from their car, listening to a fictitious radio broadcast, which is superimposed on a choreographic line.
On the radio, a writer confronts the interviewer as his creative soul: the latter becomes more and more manipulated and robotic, while on the forecourt of the underground car park, the dancers' bodies shed their layers and armour, clean themselves and intertwine their flesh and skin.
DRIVE IN is a staging and text about the manipulation of the human being towards himself, the loss of the soul, and the power of life and nature in spite of human being.
Watch the performance here
OPEN LAND / ROOM 306
2015
A film, directed by Felix Bachmann Quadros, and choreographed by myself and Francesca Sproccati. Like CARNAL, DRIVE IN, MISS UNDERSTANDING, it is part of the same creative universe, based on the research of the soul, incarnated by feminine characters, its loss or death.
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Enjoy the film.
MISS UNDERSTANDING
2014
Performance for two dancers and live text performance, adapted for theatre and disco club. Based on CARNAL CREATIVE UNIVERSE.
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CARNAL
2013
A dance, theatre, music and calligraphy performance developed in situ at Lugano's METRO and presented 14 times before the venue became a car park.
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Read about the developpement about CARNAL CREATIVE UNIVERSE in the magazine.
A fixed camera video recording.
SPEIRSUOTIO
2012
Watch and read N4, an entire magazine about Speirsuotio's creation process, with written contribution by musician Marco Fagotti, journalist Manuela Camponovo, researcher Melissa Melpignano, writer Grazia Bernasconi-Romano, writer and director Felix Bachmann Quadros, and pictures of Désirée Haupts, Michele Engeler, Antonio Demaldi, and illustration by Jacob Logos.
X+Y= UNDER CONSTRUCTION
2011
Directed by Cristina Castrillo, this have been the beginning of a deep friendship around dance and divergence of languages, with artist Francesca Sproccati. Together we co-directed Motoperpetuo, center for contemporary dance in Lugano, between 2009 and 2016.
FINAL FIGHT
2009
Early times. Lead by Giuseppe Arbia's "La fin du millénaire", this performance has been created with a collage of solo works by young dancers from Ticino and Lombardia.
Watch some of the solo's here and here.
THE WHITE ROOM
2007
A very first step in the creation of a theater dance piece.