from over thirty years, Motus proves capable, like few companies in Europe, of interpreting the urgencies and contradictions of the present. With Of the Nightingale I Envy the Fate, the company confronts the Iliad and the prophetic power of Cassandra, an inescapable archetypal figure of Western culture, offering a contemporary reinterpretation. On stage, Stefania Tansini - a performer of extraordinary scenic strength - shows herself to be both vulnerable and combative, interpreting the heralded tragedy of the Homeric character. In a performance that becomes ritual and revelation, a body and a voice that are victims of the patriarchal system claim their presence, in a sound forest of shouts, whistles, chants and hisses. In 2022 Stefania Tansini won the Ubu Prize as best performer under 35.

To the animal sphere, of the uncivilized, of the wild is traced Cassandra's talent as prophetess. In the Oresteia, the coryphaeus compares her unintelligible lament to the song of a nightingale: from the response of the "unheard youth" comes the title of this performance-crime, where Cassandra's battle is evoked by Stefania Tansini's body-voice in the moments before her unjust killing as a slave/adulteress and ξένη/foreigner. A shamanic rite where the stereotypical feminine fragility and her fiery spirit of revenge, the funereal visions of the future, like animal prowess, the elegance of gesture and blinking - hybridized nightingale from tropical feathers refracting in an altered space - in dialogue with a moving light (of the otherworldly?) that pursues and challenges her. Its language, too, oscillates, fluidly, between lucidity and animal mimicry that makes it screech stubbornly and sweetly. After the journey to the underworld, she returns to the surface transformed and nourished by the serpentine larvae of the earth, away the light feathers, emerges to head down ready to continue, because once again, we were not meant to survive, as a fighter/Cassandra like Audre Lorde writes.

Motus was born to Rimini in 1991 from Enrico Casagrande and Daniela Nicolò, producing since its founding performances of great impact, capable of foreseeing and recounting the contradictions of the present. The company has received numerous awards, including three Ubu Awards and major special prizes. Freethinkers, the two directors always take from their shows around the world: from Under the Radar (New York), to TransAmériques and PuSh Festival (Canada), Santiago to Mil (Chile),Fiba Festival (Buenos Aires), Adelaide Festival and Midsumma Festival (Australia), Taipei Arts Festival (Taiwan), Hong Kong International Black Box Festival, MITsp (Brazil) and throughout Europe.