Backstage mit Gaia Pellegrini

Your new piece veline repertoire builds on a series of earlier works, including Million Dollar Smile (2023), realised at the Museum Folkwang as part of 54 Hours Performances, curated by Marina Abramović and Billy Zhao, as well as culo 2 aka le veline, further developed during a summer residency at tanzhaus nrw and later presented at Now & Next in 2024.

Across these works, you return to relearning and reworking TV showgirl choreographies. The veline are a duo of showgirls whose role is to perform stacchetti – short, upbeat dance interludes characterised by cheerful movement and ever-present smiles. How does this embodied archive function for you? And at what point does this process shift from reappropriation into something more transformative?

It is interesting because this was not something I planned in a conscious way – it really started from a very intuitive, almost visceral place. Only afterwards did I begin to reflect on it, to take notes, and to build a structure around what had already happened.

If I had to go back to the beginning, this whole line of works started when I was at Folkwang, working with Marina Abramović on a long-duration performance. She asked us to choose an action that was deeply connected to us – something almost physical, something that comes from desire, or even obsession. At that moment, I had a very strong impulse: I felt I wanted to confront Berlusconi. It felt almost absurd to me that in 2023, years after the end of his prime ministerial career, he would again be considered for an important political role, such as the presidente della repubblica, AKA the “guardian” of the Italian republic. That anger, or that urgency, was the real starting point.

The veline material came later. At first, I was simply working from memory – trying to reconstruct how I remembered these bodies moving on television. It was not fully conscious. Only later did I decide to actually go into the archive and learn specific choreographies. And that was a very important shift. I realised that this material was already somewhere in my body, especially their smiles. But when I started to really study it, something else happened. The process itself was quite complex, because the choreography is not documented in a dance-oriented way. The camera does not care about the movement – it cares about the bodies. So, more often than not, you will not see the full choreography. I had to reconstruct, invent, and fill in gaps. It became a kind of collage between what existed and what I imagined.

At that time, I was working alone, in Barcelona, during an Erasmus exchange programme. I spent a lot of time simply being with the material – learning, repeating, testing. There was also a strong element of character work. I come from physical theatre, so stepping into a role is something I am familiar with. But I think the real transformation happened later, in the performance. When I performed in the museum, wearing these very tight, short dresses, being exposed for many hours a day, something shifted. There is a moment where your body becomes completely visible, vulnerable – you cannot fully control how you are seen.

And yet, I decide to continue. I think that decision is crucial; it is the moment you willingly give your consent. Together with the act of spitting at Berlusconi’s image, it reframed the situation. It gave me a kind of agency within that exposure. So, for me, the reappropriation did not simply happen through learning the material or conceptualising the piece – it happened in the moment where I chose to remain in that vulnerable position and to redirect its meaning.

Your work repeatedly refers back to Italian television culture from the Berlusconi era. How did growing up with those images shape your perspective – and how did you approach this as artistic and choreographic material?

As I told you, it was not a fully conscious decision at first. It became one gradually, almost in dialogue with what I was encountering around me. At some point during my studies, as I was directing my research towards new interests, I started noticing that many artists of my generation were engaging intensely with questions of hyper-sexualisation, self-image, and representation – often working very directly with the body as image, and with forms of exposure that circulate through social media. I was looking at these practices a lot, and I also met Candela Capitán and her collaborator Virginia Martín in Barcelona, which was an important encounter for me at the time. As much as seeing Virgen Maria play a set in Razzmatazz supported by Bluetoothgirl performing on the pole. Moreover, I started collaborating at a distance with stylist and art director Giulia Parenti, who introduced me to the visual language of fashion and brought depth to my research from that point of view. There was already a discourse happening, and I began to recognise myself within it. And then I realised: I also carry something. I also have an archive – my own. Because I grew up with Berlusconi. People sometimes say, “You’re too young to be affected by that,” but I was actually born into that culture. For the first ten years of my life, this was the dominant imagery. These representations of femininity, these bodies, these roles – they were everywhere. We often think about childhood mainly in relation to family and neglect how social and cultural conditioning affect our socialisation. Television and media shape how you perceive the world. Therefore, this was really my first impression of the world. At a certain point, this very personal archive met a wider artistic and theoretical discourse – and that is when it became something I wanted to consciously process through my work.

You work extensively with hyperfeminine aesthetics – forms of sexiness that have been heavily objectified, historically. Do you see these codes more as something to be dismantled, or as material that can be reclaimed and reworked?

For me, hyperfemininity is not something to erase. It is something I experience in my daily life as being very empowering, potentially. In the communities I am part of, people play with gender all the time. Some play with hyperfemininity, some with masculinity – it is not fixed, it is something we construct. And there is a lot of joy in that. So, the question was never how to get rid of these images. It was more: how can we work with them, in a different way? How can we shift their meaning? The issue is not femininity itself – it is the framework, the objectification, the misogyny. In veline repertoire, the strategy was to redirect desire and erotism. The performers remain seductive, playful, working with those same codes – but they decide where that desire and sensuality is directed. Instead of addressing an undefined external gaze – which is in fact very specifically male – they address each other. So, what happens when you keep the same language but change the addressee? For me, the whole piece develops from that question.

Your work engages quite directly with regimes of looking. How do you approach concepts such as the “male gaze”? And how do choreographic strategies or strategies of staging – like the 360-degree set design – allow you to reconfigure or complicate these dynamics?

What I find interesting is how different the responses can be. Two male critics, for example – one in Cologne (Thomas Linden – Kölnische Rundschau, Cologne) and one in Barcelona (Oriol Puig Taulé – Novel, Barcelona)  – wrote quite striking responses to the work. Thomas Linden, for example, wrote that “nothing is as distant here as the male gaze”. I found that very striking, because it suggests a kind of disorientation – maybe even a loss of position.

At the same time, there are elements in the work that deliberately destabilise expectations. For instance, the act of spitting – it interrupts the aesthetic; it breaks the continuity of pleasure. It creates a rupture, a moment where something shifts.

The 360-degree staging is another layer. It removes a fixed perspective – there is no stable front. The audience is constantly repositioned, seeing different sides, different angles.

But what I am increasingly interested in is also the audience itself. So far, the piece has mostly attracted a younger queer audience – and that already changes the dynamics in the room.

The audience becomes part of the work – not actively, but through their presence. It establishes a certain atmosphere, a certain regime of looking. So, I am wondering whether audiences themselves can produce a different politics of the gaze, simply by being there.

The piece clearly embraces spectacle – pleasure, glamour, entertainment. How do you balance this with its critical dimension?

For me, they are not separate. I am very interested in creating an experience that is emotionally engaging. When I go to the theatre, what stays with me are works that move me – emotionally, sensorially. They do not have to be perfect, but they need to take me somewhere.

So, in my own work, I try to remain faithful to that. I want to create something that people can feel, that stays with them.

There is also a sense of responsibility. We work with public funding – with resources that come from society. I feel that this should be returned to the audience – not only as critique, but also as something that offers pleasure, that gives something back.

So, for me, critique and entertainment are not opposites – they actually support each other.

Intimacy plays a central role in your work. How do you approach making intimacy visible on stage without reproducing objectification? And how do you negotiate questions of consent, vulnerability, and exposure within the process?

This is something we developed very carefully as a team. It is not something I impose – it really emerges through the process. Rebecca de Toro and Shauna Fischer have been working with this material for several years. We talk a lot, we write, we physically test things. It is a constant exchange. For me, intimacy is always connected to consent. It is something that exists because all the people involved agree to it and shape it together.

The performers bring a lot of knowledge into the process. They know how something feels in their bodies, how the audience might respond, what they need in order to feel safe or to go further. Over time, we developed a shared sensitivity – a kind of common understanding of what is needed to create this space.

And in the end, the intimacy that appears on stage comes very much from them – their trust, their pleasure, and also their willingness to move towards the edges of that safe space.

Collaboration seems central to your practice. How does this shape your role as a choreographer?

It shapes it completely. This work is really the result of many people coming together.

Working with Ley Akpinar was a key moment. As contemporary dancers, we were already commenting on the material simply by performing it – it was not fully embodied. Ley brought in a completely different approach, treating show dance as a technique, with precision and seriousness. That shifted our understanding of the material entirely.

There are many others who shaped the work: Giulia Parenti, who is responsible for styling and visual direction; Miranda Simón Abelló, the scenographer and light designer, who brought in so much glamour and spectacle; and Tim Pauli, who composed the music and brought in a sense of play, distortion, and emotional depth. So, authorship becomes something shared. My role is less about controlling everything and more about holding a space in which all these contributions can come together.

What is important to me is that these collaborations are not just functional, but relational. For example, Marta Marinotti, who is a photographer, developed a photographic project around Million Dollar Smile and later showed these images as part of the exhibition Soft Systems. Forme di coesistenza fotografica at Spazio Punch in Venice. That project was significant, because it lent visibility to the way these collaborations continue beyond the performance itself, how they enter other contexts and how they begin to circulate in different forms.

And then there are people like Alice Minervini, a researcher and artist based in Italy, who I met right after premiering Million Dollar Smile. Right before me, she had written a letter to Berlusconi for her publication Comizi d’Emigrazione, which, for me, was a very strong moment of recognition – of understanding that I am part of a wider field of discourse. We are in constant exchange: she approaches through art history, writing and curatorial practices and I approach from within the body and performance. These perspectives continuously inform each other. So shared authorship also becomes something that extends over time – through ongoing conversations.

Your work is marked by a striking precision and depth in the way you engage with movement material. Would you describe research as an integral part of your practice – and how do you see it evolving beyond the studio, perhaps as something closer to a networked or relational form of knowledge production?

For me, research is not only about time in the studio or structured investigation. It is really about relationships. It is the people I am in constant exchange with – artists, writers, collaborators. We share references, ideas, images, articles, videos. It is an ongoing conversation, a kind of living archive that is constantly updated through contact. Sometimes it feels like a constellation: people I regularly text, send links to, or exchange ideas with. That flow is as important to me as any formal research structure. Of course, there is also a more institutional or structured dimension – studio time, rehearsals, production contexts. But what really drives the work is this network of encounters, including moments that extend beyond performance itself, such as exhibitions or shared projects in different contexts like the exhibition in Venice or the international scholarship programme Tanzrecherche NRW run by the NRW Cultural Secretariat, in which I took part. These moments make the research visible in other formats and allow it to circulate beyond the stage. So, research, for me, is something that is alive. It grows through connection, and through the ways in which people continue to affect each other’s practices over time.

Thanks for your time and for giving us such an interesting insight into your work!
 

Gaia Pellegrini is a choreographer and performer based in Cologne. Completing her studies in Physical Theatre at Folkwang University Essen and specialising in choreography at the Conservatori Superior de Dansa in Barcelona, Gaia’s work explores intimacy, sexuality, and femininity as a spectrum. Moved by a quasi-documentary interest, she challenges narratives around misogyny and homosexual desire, transforming them into spaces of reappropriation and empowerment. Collaboration is central to Gaia’s practice, with key partners including Rebecca de Toro, Shauna Fischer, Alice Minervini, and Giulia Parenti. Working between fashion and performing arts she collaborates with theatre and art institutions such as MAI, ANTIC TEATRE, tanzhaus nrw. Her work has been presented at Folkwang Museum, MOLT, Fondazione Sozzani, among others.

The interview was conducted by Lucie Ortmann, dramaturge at tanzhaus nrw.