75% PhD performance and seminar: Felicita Brusoni

75% PhD Performance: Red Carpet
12 February 2025, at 13:00–14:00 
Location: Studio B, Malmö Theatre Academy

75% PhD Seminar
12 February 2025, at 15:00–17:00
Location: Black Room, Inter Arts Center
Opponent: Stefan Östersjö

75% PhD Performance: Red Carpet
12 February 2025, at 13:00–14:00 
Location: Studio B, Malmö Theatre Academy

Red Carpet. A vocal-body composition for Extended Singer and dancer.

Composition is one of the most unexpressed possibilities of the Extended Singer, the idiomatic figure at the core of my doctoral project. The pure creative process is the third and last stage of emancipation to which the contemporary music interpreter can aspire to redeem herself/himself from the standard position of a mere executor of someone else’s music.
This case study was expressly designed to test the risk of exposing a singer to the challenge of pure creation and collaborating with another artist, a dancer - Valentina Sechi - using no score and no charts to build a composition based on only two elements: voice and body.

Red Carpet is a performance that, ranging between present and past, investigates forms of exorcisation of repression in the feminine, understood as a collective archetype, that has always had to devise ways and means to manifest itself and survive in its essence. On the Red Carpet parade images of women, two but numerous, who embody through the use of multiple vocal techniques and corporal utterances, the cries of a “collective trauma”, which suffocates the expression of the self.    Body and voice are the protagonists as they are symbols of both censorship and expression par excellence and are used as a means of individual exploration and collective voicing. On this red carpet, a metaphor for formal public exposure, the singer tries to give voice to those who are told to remain silent and the dancer to give substance to catharsis, in a succession of anarchic fragilities and ferocious desires for survival.

Valentina Sechi is a multifaceted Italian artist, dancer and choreographer. Her training, which began in Sardinia, led her to study with internationally renowned teachers, perfecting her technique in Italy and abroad. She has performed in important opera productions, collaborating with internationally renowned directors such as Micha Van Hoecke, Davide Livermore and Franco Zeffirelli. Her versatility has led her to work with numerous companies, among the most recent ones we remember ALDES, Adarte, Compagnia Verdiliadanza, of which she is an associated artist, and Compagnia TPO, treading prestigious stages all over the world, from the BAM in New York to the Philharmonie de Paris. In addition to her activity as an interpreter, she is the author and choreographer of shows that range from dance theatre to more experimental performances, often focused on themes of social relevance. Parallel to her artistic career, she is an appreciated dance teacher.

concept Valentina Sechi
created by Felicita Brusoni, Valentina Sechi
scenography Charlotte Østergaard
thanks to the kind permission of Kitt Johnson X-act
light design Carolina Agostini
production Versiliadanza
with the support of MiC, Region Tuscany, Municipality of Florence
thanks to Inter Arts Center, Lund University

75% PhD Seminar
12 February 2025, at 15:00–17:00
Location: Black Room, Inter Arts Center
Opponent: Stefan Östersjö

The 75% seminar of Felicita Brusoni’s doctoral project “A Voice Beyond the Edge” will take place at 15:00 on the 12th of February 2025 at the Inter Arts Center (Black Room), just after her 75% Performance Red Carpet (Studio B, Teaterhögskolan, at 13:00). It will be a discussion between Stefan Östersjö (chaired professor of Musical Performance at Piteå School of Music, Luleå University of Technology) and Brusoni.

Trying to answer the background question, “What is at stake for a contemporary music singer today?” Brusoni will present her idea of a manifesto of the Extended Singer.

Could this new artistic subject define a new role for the contemporary music singer? Or, at least, could the Extended Singer concept become some sort of archetype that helps the singer to emancipate from the “classical” expectations as a mere interpreter of someone else’s will to be converted into an artist-creator, able to build performances that even overcome the concept of a score? She will then present a collection of case studies, which she designed to deal with different aspects of being an Extended Singer today and which can be considered, at the same time, both the methods and the outcomes of her research project.

Read more about Felicita Brusoni's artistic research here.