Marianna De Sanctis (IT)

She discovered the hula hoop 17 years ago and hasn’t let go of it since. She studied at the FLIC circus school in Italy and then at the LIDO in France. She has performed with several companies, including Gandini, La Barque Acide, Compagnie Nadère Arts Vivants, and Martin Zimmermann. For over ten years now, she has been developing her own unique style—where the simple spin of the hula hoop is sometimes left forgotten in a corner of her mind. She also works as a coach, artistic director, and teacher. She created her solo piece Mother.Woman.Artist and collaborates with Cie Avec Moi.

Her prototype is Slow down. (time 25min)
Slow down Slow down has been developed in an immersion residency in the salt marshes of Solana Ston, Croatia with ROOM 100.

Slow Down is a sensitive circus-like performance on our collective and individual need for slowness.
A clown transfers to three objects the metaphor of labour, of inadequacy, of absurd relation to the work that has to be done, from burden to joy, from revolution to burn out. She delegates big questions to her objects and game: If we know we need to slow down, how can we get there, we little things?
Every day I work
Every day I start again
Every day in the worst I still laugh
Task after task
I am humanly too active
Faster
Unsuitable tools
Absurd work
It’s up to me is it boring or wonderful
When the world falls apart I work
Can I have a little rest please ? I can’t
One day I have a dirty revelation
Renouncing the glory of producing means finding the earth in my hands
This solo performance is a co-writing work between Perrine Budan and Marianna de Sanctis, both clown and jugglers. Their work started in the meeting with the workers and environment of the Ston salt marshes in Croatia. The encounter with a profession of hard work, dependent on changing climatic conditions, extremely physical work and mostly done by men led to put a focus on general labour conditions at the heart of her project. Slow Down reused objects they find in the salt marshes and an aesthetic based on a dichotomy we find in salt production : on the surface we have a pure white precious flower of salt to harvest, under a deep mud made of silt and salt water.