La table verte, 2024, Marco Berrettini and Alice Gervais-Ragu as part of Dance First Think Later

Speakers: Démosthène Agrafiotis (GR), poet, performer, essayist / Jean-François Cardoso (FR), researcher in information science / Sylvain Chaty (FR), astrophysicist / Laetitia Chauvin (FR), publisher, art critic / Aurélie Dupuis (CH), architect / Silvia Fanti (IT), director of the Xing cultural organisation in Bologna / Simon Marsan (FR), musicologist, composer / Yann Marussich (CH), performer, choreographer

With his company *Melk Prod. Marco Berrettini has produced some 40 shows, as well as performances, video installations, and collaborations with visual artists. He has teamed up with dance researcher Alice Gervais-Ragu to come up with this original project, inspired as much by The Green Table, an anti-militarist ballet created by Kurt Jooss (choreographer and teacher of Pina Bausch) in 1932 in Paris, as by the World Game developed by Richard Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s.

“Imagine George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” in your body. Now picture a country, France for example, with liver cancer. A serious economic crisis is called a depression. The lungs of the Earth, oceans or forests? There is the idea of Mother Earth. There is the dance of atoms.” (Marco Berrettini)

“The body (microcosm) and the world (macrocosm) share an infinite number of functions, both imaginary and pragmatic. What would happen if we were to consider the functioning of a body by analogy with the way we design infrastructure, conduct politics, and organise the global market? Is there a common thread that leads from the interoceptive body to the exteroceptive, to the dancing body too, and right through to all the cultural and societal manifestations of our planet? To explore this concept and question our way of thinking about the world as a whole, *Melk Prod. has created La table verte, a series of discussions, games, and danced exchanges based on subjects that are as absurd as they are essential, with audience participation.” (Marco Berrettini and Alice Gervais-Ragu)

German-born Italian dancer and choreographer Marco Berrettini won the German disco dance championship in 1978. He trained in London and then in Essen under Hans Züllig and Pina Bausch. He also studied European Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology, and Theatre Science at Frankfurt University. His works, including Sorry, Do the Tour (2001, then 2019), No Paraderan (2009, then 2020), *Melk Prod. Goes to New Orleans, the iFeel 1-4 Series (2009-2017), My Soul is my Visa (2018), El Adaptador (2024), have been presented on numerous stages in Switzerland, France, Germany, and Austria. He was awarded the Dance outside the mainstream prize at the 2022 Swiss Dance Awards.

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Alice Gervais-Ragu is a writer and dance researcher at EDESTA – École doctorale esthétique, sciences et technologies des Arts at Université Paris 8, where she is working on her thesis, Écologie des imaginaires chorégraphiques en temps de crise. She teaches analysis of works and dramaturgy, writes for various journals, and has contributed to several scientific works (Art et mathématiques, Jannink, 2020; Danse contemporaine et littérature, Les Presses du Réel, 2017; Danse et éducation, IDEA, 2016).