Visioni del Corpo. Maurizio Cattelan: from Paris to Florence

After the great success of SANTA at Reggiane Parco Innovazione, art journalist and communicator Nicolas Ballario returns to explore the universe of Maurizio Cattelan, joined by choreographer Lara Guidetti, for the new and highly anticipated “dance-conference” Visioni del Corpo. Maurizio Cattelan.

For the first time, Visioni del Corpo expands abroad, debuting on Tuesday, November 4 at the Italian Cultural Institute in Paris, as part of ITALIA DANZA, a co-designed project by the Direzione Generale per la Diplomazia Pubblica e Culturale (MAECI) and the Centro Coreografico Nazionale/Aterballetto.

This debut marks an important first step in the project’s international journey, bringing the dialogue between dance and contemporary art beyond Italian borders.

Tour Dates

After its Paris debut, the performance will be restaged at La Fonderia in Reggio Emilia during Dance Week, with three showings:

The tour concludes on Friday, November 14 at PARC – Performing Arts Research Center in Florence.

Maurizio Cattelan Bidibidobidiboo 1996 photo Zeno Zotti copia (Palazzo Grassi, Venezia)

A series that unites art and contemporary dance

Born in 2024, Visioni del Corpo is a series of events that explores the body as a common language between art and dance — a space for encounter and reflection.
Each episode of the project creates a dialogue between a visual artist and contemporary choreography, fostering an exchange between image, gesture, and thought.

In this new edition, the works at the centre of the stage fully embody the irreverent, ironic, and provocative character of Maurizio Cattelan’s art — a vision capable of questioning art, society, and identity with sharp wit and powerful visual impact.

Maurizio Cattelan, Him, 2001, ph Tom Lindboe (Blenheim) A

Three works, three visions in motion

Three emblematic works by the artist — HIM, Ribellati, and Bidibidobidibù — are explored and reinterpreted, each accompanied by an original choreography performed by Alessia Giacomelli and Kiran Gezels.
The three choreographic pieces arise from works that are very different from one another, compelling the bodies to enter ever-evolving physical grammars: from physical theatre to abstract form, from extreme minimalism to the poetic power of the mask.

The challenge is not to create a stylistic continuum, but to generate radical metamorphoses that free the dancers from the traces of the author and lead them into unforeseen territories.

Dance as a mirror of art

The choreographic work emerges from the encounter with Cattelan’s art — not to translate it, but to be permeated by its underlying tensions.
Each piece, entrusted to dance by Nicolas Ballario, carries within it a short circuit of irony and everyday tragedy: it is within this space that the body finds its substance, becoming a vehicle for contradictions, ruptures, and provocations.

Dance neither narrates nor represents — it evokes and suggests, generating living presences that are fragile and paradoxical in their vitality. Movement pushes beyond the comfort zone of choreographic language, reinventing itself with every encounter with the artwork.

What arises are fragments of possible stories, visions that flow like bubbles of imagination, offering the viewer not the fixity of the image, but its continuous transformation.
A game of equals between dance and contemporary art, where what’s at stake is perception itself: the ability to move between truth and falsehood, irony and drama — laughing and choking at once, as happens in everyday life.

Published On: 29 October 2025

News

With “AN ECHO, A FRAME”, the performances meet the artworks of “I Preferiti di Marino. Chapter II – Opus Mundi.”

On the occasion of the exhibition “I Preferiti di Marino. Chapter II – Opus Mundi”, on view from 6 February to 28 June 2026 at the Centro Arti e Scienze Golinelli, Fondazione Golinelli, in collaboration with the CCN/Aterballetto, presents the performative project “AN ECHO, A FRAME”, conceived by choreographer Philippe Kratz.