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Personal Statement

A couple of years ago I came across an article that implicated the C.I.A. in a failed drug trafficking case, following leads given by a number of eyewitnesses that had been involved in the procedures. It was in a small, independent website. Informants and information appeared legitimate - some of the whistleblowers were airport and embassy officials cited by name - but the revelation never made it past a small online community. Thinking about these informants I wondered, what kind of outcome had they anticipated - or hoped for - when they had gone on record? Did they foresee possibly being incriminated? Did they go into hiding? What if someone had found happiness in both the self-marginalization and implied state of notoriety yielded by their revelation, would they avoid finding out the true outcomes?

With Radio Delirio I wanted to explore displacement as a kind of safety zone. Having lived for the majority of my life outside of the country in which I was born and raised (Italy), I’ve always been conscious of the degree to which one can choose to assimilate into the social fabric that surrounds them, and how connected that is to a sense of accomplishment in the immigrant experience. Can self-worth be built without measuring up to society? The page turner in Radio Delirio has found solace in the state of anonymity into which he claims he’s been forced.  It has given him an excuse to extract himself from a game he feels has no regard for him. What I wanted to present on stage is a rendition of the internal support system that comes into play when the truths we choose to believe become unstable. The radio program he envisions sees him as the subject of public attention while affirming his need to stay in the shadow. Similarly, imagining a net of surveillance and investigations around him is not used to suggest paranoia, but as a contemporary form of validation, a projection of a life less inconsequential.

The movement vocabulary of the piece often takes its cue from action and espionage movies, isolating some the most recognizable physical conventions and then streamlining them into choreography patterns, posture shifts, and dynamics that suggest their embodiment without falling into mimicry. The body in a state of alertness or emanating a deceivingly calm appearance; swift, expert movements and subtle hints that the body we are seeing is in a space it should not occupy. But also passages that emphasize the incongruities presented in the piece: a momentary jolt of morale, the weight of an irreversible act, physical notations made by someone constantly questioning his own body language and himself.  

ALESSSANDRO MAGANIA