| Luca Pacella (EN) | Ara En Moviment

Luca Pacella

Italy

INTENSIVE

Between Heaven and Earth / Topography of Contact

Intensive 1:
Between Heaven and Earth – Weight, Point of Contact, and Tensegrity

Dancing between heaven and earth involves thinking of ourselves as a circuit of forces, observing the dynamic relationship between the body, gravity, the ground, and the anti-gravity force. The body, being a segmented structure, requires tension, a myofascial tone that allows it to maintain communication among all its parts. In Contact Improvisation, it is essential to consider the ideal and changing tone to maintain this intracorporeal communication and to be able to dialogue with others through contact. We will think of contact as a structural and dynamic piece of information that we are sharing with the other person, a bridge that allows us to expand the concept of circuit to otherness.

Intensive 2:
Contact Topography – Fits, Grips, and Transitions

When a body behaves as a coherent and interconnected structure, body segments can be territories for levers, grips, and fits. What does it mean for a body to be coherent? In a coherent body, joints are organized in a collaborative manner: the body is a bridge, meaning the entire structure communicates through its parts without disturbing the flow of movement. From this starting point, we will analyze fits and grips, considering the shared anatomy between different bodies and body biomechanics in relation to the distribution of weight and forces. We will ask ourselves what the correct myofascial tone is for entering, sustaining, and transforming one physical relationship into another.

ABOUT ME

Luca Pacella (Rome, Italy, 1980) holds a degree in Cellular and Molecular Biology (Tor Vergata, Rome). He is a dancer, teacher, manager, and dance producer. Since 2014 he resides in Unquillo, Córdoba, Argentina.

He has been continuously training independently since 1998 in Capoeira, Contact Improvisation, Contemporary Partner Dance, Butoh Dance, and training techniques with various teachers and schools such as Fighting Monkeys, Marcello Palozzo, Daniel Defalco, Ekhaterina Basalaeva, Bruno Caverna, Angelina Dony, Aaron Brando, Tim O’Donnell, Andrew Harwood, Yumiko Yoshioka, Rhea Volij, among others.

He has been a member of various dance and theater companies in Italy and Argentina, such as Lunaif, Impacto Teatral, and Levelibular. In 2012, he created the CabraCru Platform, with which he premiered Prisma Humana (2016) and Soy Humane (2018). In 2018, he founded the educational project MA.CA.CO. Since 2023, he has been a member of Cuerpo Bambú as director and co-creator, with which he premiered the play Estepicursor (2024).

As a Contact Improvisation teacher, he has been invited to the Festivals of Cuba (2018), Misiones (2018), Barcelona (2018), Ukraine (2019), Thailand (2019), La Plata (2023), Buenos Aires (JamBa 2024), and Invernal (MonteCIto 2024), and to independent workshops in Italy, Finland, Spain, Greece, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay. Since 2023, he has co-managed the Contact Improvisation event La Momentum (Córdoba, Argentina). For several years, he has been investigating the possibilities that Contact Improvisation offers in creative processes, particularly when combined and fused with other languages such as Butoh, puppet and mask theater, and physical theater.

He has received creation grants from Instituto Nacional del Teatro and Agencia Córdoba Cultura, and has been a beneficiary of the FNA Trainers grant (2021) with the project Mecánicas al Borde by CabraCru.