Kat Válastur's 'Rasp Your Soul' Debuts at Romaeuropa Festival

Choreographer and dancer Kat Válastur, Greek-born and Berlin-based, presented the Italian premiere of her performance 'Rasp Your Soul' on September 29, 2020, at Teatro Argentina in Rome as part of the 35th edition of the Romaeuropa Festival. The work is part of her ongoing cycle 'The straggered dances of beauty,' which since 2017 has focused on 'the production of mythologies as a tool to process the questions of our present.' The performance features performer Enrico Ticconi, who appears as a neoclassical sculpture surrounded by wooden sticks in a white space with intermittent lighting. The piece critiques digital capitalist culture, drawing on philosopher Byung-Chul Han's concept of numbness to passions, and explores the impossibility of human connection in the digital age. Through fragmented movement, vocalization, and acoustic distortion, Ticconi's body undergoes morphing, alternating between deconstruction and fluid-robotic qualities. The work questions whether a new contemporary mythology can be created, using the body as a site for rediscovering sensibility. The performance was reviewed by Valeria Vannucci for Artribune.