ROPEBERRY is a physical theatre project, whose main ingredients are butoh dance and shibari. Conceived in 2012 as a collaboration between Coco Katsura and Valentin Tszin, Ropeberry has been reimagined and developed from 2022 togeter with the new group members, butoh dancer Carmen Lafran and sound artist Daniel Williams, as an ironic saga about evil and good, about the absurdity of war, power relationships, systems in the system, hope for freedom and despair for the current situation.

 

Ropeberry is for us also about the value of art as resistance and resilience in a world where economic interests leave little space for artists to express their voices. In this survival mode each narration is tragi-comic, reflecting the ridiculousness of the human nature oscillating between brutal forces and ideal ambitions. Carrying these oppositions ROPEBERRY is absolutely ironic because rather than dismissing contradictions, it embraces them, together with the loss of meaning that follows. Nevertheless our goal is not to pursue nothing, but rather to cultivate and grow this nothingness of meaning in order to let something else emerge out of it. Perhaps in the neurons of the spectators.

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ROPEBERRY Creators:

Coco Katsura : Shibari master

Valentin Tszin / Carmen Lafran : Butoh

Daniel Williams: Sound

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Each edition of Ropeberry has hosted and will continue hosting one or more guests from different artistic fields, in cronological order: Alexey Kokhanov, Maurice Ginsberg, Louis Fleishauer, Hilary Whitmore, Yuko Kaseki