Performer and choreographer Marianna Andrigo will be scaling the walls of the National Library in Valletta and of the Citadel in Victoria in a gravity-defying performance. She tells Veronica Stivala about her passion for dance and how she wishes walls could talk to her.

While many dancers already defy gravity in their dexterous and contorting movements, a new performance has taken this concept one step further. Vertical Waves is “a vertical dance project” in which the dancers dance not on the floor, but on walls. The walls are essentially the walls of buildings and because the performers perform in different locations, their performances change according to the venue.

Using ropes, harnesses and descenders, the performers play with a perceived lack of gravity using contemporary dance as their movement technique.

Vertical Waves, which forms part of this year’s Malta International Arts Festival, is the brainchild of artist Aldo Aliprandi and dancer Marianna Andrigo. Born in 2010, the project is part of an artistic process that mixes research on body movement and sound, video and space.

Vertical Waves has been performed at dance festivals and street art festivals, site specific creations, public and private events in Italy and abroad as well as many other site specific creations in collaboration with eVenti Verticali (Sardegna).

I speak to Marianna, and despite the fact that we correspond via email, her bubbly nature is still evident. Her passion for dance and her love of people comes across so clearly and it is fun to correspond with her.

A performer and choreographer, Marianna has been dancing since she was seven, when she asked her mother to take her to a dance school. “I danced everywhere,” she recalls. Marianna speaks with great passion about her discipline. “I know I cannot live without dance,” she states, confiding how it is inextricably linked with her identity: “Dance has emerged in my body, not because it has given me special skills but because it is the place where my identity is nourished with vitality.” She is equally humble and reveals that she is “always afraid of not being enough and it is always a great gift to confirm the possibility of continuing an endless path”.

Using ropes, harnesses and descenders, the performers play with a perceived lack of gravity using contemporary dance as their movement technique

Marianna trained in contemporary dance and theatre at the Academy of Contemporary Dance directed by Ariella Vidach and Rosita Mariani in Milan. Through workshops, artistic residencies and many collaborations she developed her interest in movement and improvisation. She has performed in a wide range of productions across Europe.

She is also a dance teacher and is constantly involved in many other companies such as Aleph company, Ullateatro, Electronic Girls, Eventi Verticali and Jennifer Rosa. She is co-founder and co-organiser of Live Arts Cultures, a cultural association dedicated to performing arts and interestingly, also has a degree in Political Science.

Marianna has been collaborating with Aliprandi since 2009, creating performances with a special focus on the relationship between sound and movement. She explains how Vertical Waves was borne of her desire to “create her own path”. She sees the creation of a performance as multifaceted: “I can perform, I can choreograph but then I want to build collaborations to analyse movements from outside, to work with music, to think about space, to think about concepts,” she notes. She explains how Aliprandi was her ideal partner to work with “because he’s very open artist, practical, philosophical, abstract and concrete”.

The musical element is an important one in this performance. Vertical Waves sees a collaboration with musician Johann Merrich and the visual designer Mauro Ferrario. Andrigo underlines the importance of working with musicians to “create an interdependency between sound and action”.

This is all the more important in a vertical performance, she says, as she “feels the need to generate atmospheres to reduce the distance between the eyes of the audience and the performers. Music has to help the performers and audience to meet.” For this reason, the music can change each time. Just as the ‘stage’ changes, so does the music. “The architecture affects the timing, the movements, the possibilities of relationships, of appearance and disappearance,” she says.

What is so interesting about this performance is that the space itself affects the development of the creation “as it determines the uniqueness of the action in relation to the place in which it takes place”.

Marianna will be performing at the National Library in Valletta and the Citadel in Victoria. While she has seen photos of the buildings – “two completely different situations”, she has not yet visited them and will have to “start to think about them before (she goes) to Malta because when we’ll be there, time will be short and it will be a quick agreement between dance, space, technical needs, light and anchorages”.

Marianna’s passion emerges clearly once again when asked what she is looking forward to about her performances in Malta. “I wish places will talk to me,” she says. “I wish to be under a lucky star so we can do our best for the Malta performances.” And, she adds: “I wish to meet nice people!”

Vertical Waves takes place on Friday at 9pm outside the National Library, Valletta.

www.maltaartsfestival.org