ZEROGRAMMI 25°

In 2026, Zerogrammi celebrates its 25th anniversary. A quarter century of creations, of bodies crossing the stage in search of lightness, of stories holding together irony and fragility, discipline and wonder.

To mark this anniversary, within the framework of Past Forward — the project through which the company reactivates and transmits its choreographic heritage — we return to the point of origin: Zerogrammi, the first creation signed in 2005, the seed from which everything took shape.

Bringing this work back to life means stepping once again into a room of memory still filled with light. It means rediscovering the playful urgency of two young artists searching for a dance capable of flying without ever leaving the ground — a poetry made of simple objects, delicate gags and a human lightness that over time became the company’s poetic signature.

Today, twenty years after its creation, Zerogrammi returns to the stage like a photo album whose colours have never faded: a performance that still speaks to us, moves us, and reminds us why we began dancing in the first place.

THE ORIGINAL SYNOPSIS

Two teddy bears and a Barbie doll with her head taped back on, idling away time in a surreal Déjeuner sur l’Herbe that seems painted by Jacques Tati.

To play seriously when play becomes the only serious thing capable of saving us from the seriousness of life.

The games of two Candides somewhere between Cochi Ponzoni and Renato Pozzetto, between Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, at the theatre of Marcel Marceau and Merce Cunningham, dressed like tender village fools wearing those caps with aviator earflaps from the Great War — in peacetime.

Hats for flying without leaving the ground. At most gliding with the engine off, carried by the air, easy as a Sunday morning.

Zerogrammi: a dance without weight. Light. A dance for flying — for the flight without takeoff of which we have spoken — and then gliding, gliding once more across everyday life, the life of small things we must not forget.

Remembering to breathe.

Gliding, carried by the wind of our lightnesses — yes, let us even call them frivolities — because that way we breathe better, and we can see everything clearly from just a few centimetres above the grass of ordinary days that arrive once a week and become unique within these small games and innocent frictions, where one can become two clowns.

Two mimes and contemporary dancers, but also tango dancers if Bésame Mucho happens to play on the radio; actors too, and in any case simply two ordinary people with ridiculous hats and funny sweaters. (...)

Two clowns in a performance as light as love at its beginning, as gentle as the sweetest breeze of a spring evening back when there still were half-seasons: beautiful and delicate like that someone each of us has — or waits for — for moments free of worry.

Those moments without whose memory we could not survive.

— Sergio Gilles Lacavalla