Andrea Costanzo Martini

Pas de Cheval

26 min

#stage

Italy

What do a horse and a dancer have in common? Both are admired for their grace, strength and agility. Both are trained, disciplined and subject to the demands placed upon them by others. And both look considerably more elegant if we forget everything it took to get them there.

Pas de Cheval is an ironic duet by Andrea Costanzo Martini and Francesca Foscarini, created for two dancers who are no longer at the beginning of their careers. The work takes the horse as a symbol of freedom, strength and grace, while revealing the less romantic side of this image: a horse must be trained, disciplined and conditioned. In much the same way, a dancer’s body is shaped through years of training, sacrifice and constant adaptation to the expectations of the system. On stage, the two performers move in silence, as if they were trained horses, while their voices emerge from recordings. Their whispers weave together complaints, confessions and dryly humorous observations on the life of a performer: hotel rooms, low fees, physical exhaustion, ageing and the power dynamics of the dance world.

Their voices create a kind of inner monologue running beneath the physical action—a commentary that gradually reveals what usually remains hidden behind the trained body. What is a performer willing to do to gain the audience’s attention and affection? And what is the cost of remaining within a system that demands constant proof of one’s worth? Through humour and irony, Pas de Cheval exposes the contradictions of live performance and explores the shifting boundaries between training and freedom, obedience and desire, virtuosity and vulnerability. The body admired by the audience thus also reveals itself as a body that works, persists, ages and wonders how long it can keep going.

26 minutes of horses and professional survival.

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bio

Andrea Costanzo Martini is an Italian choreographer, dancer and performer. Born and raised in Italy, he trained in contemporary dance and ballet before moving to Munich at the age of nineteen to study at the Heinz-Bosl Stiftung Ballet Akademien. In 2004, he began his professional career as a dancer at the Aalto Theatre in Essen. In 2006, he joined Batsheva Dance Company, where he worked with Ohad Naharin and Sharon Eyal and began his practice as a Gaga teacher and choreographer through the company’s Dancer Create programme. He later joined Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm, performing works by Benoît Lachambre, Alexander Ekman, Crystal Pite, Jefta van Dinther and Tillman O’Donnell.

Since 2013, Martini has developed his own choreographic work internationally, combining extreme physicality, theatrical narrative, irony and humour. His practice explores power dynamics between performer and spectator, the desire to capture attention and the risk of objectifying the body, often blurring the boundaries between dance and performance art through the use of text, video, objects and audience interaction. In 2013, he received First Prize for both dance and choreography at the International Solo Tanz Theater Stuttgart for What Happened in Torino. His works have toured extensively across Europe and internationally, with recent creations including Life in Lycra (2023), Animal In (2024) and Blaubart 2.0 (2025). Since 2007, he has been a certified Gaga teacher and leads workshops internationally. Since 2026, he has also served as artistic director of the Re.Search professional training programme at NOD – Nuova Officina della Danza in Turin.

credits

Idea and choreography Andrea Costanzo Martini

Performers Francesca Foscarini, Andrea Costanzo Martini

Lighting design Yoav Barel

Music Angelo Badalamenti, Ennio Morricone

Text Francesca Foscarini, Andrea Costanzo Martini

Production ZEBRA – Contemporary Dance Company

Production with the support of Artisti Associati Gorizia, Tanzhaus Zürich, NOD – Nuova Officina della Danza Torino

In collaboration with Centro di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale per la Danza Scenario Pubblico/CZD

Guest performance production En–Knap Productions

In collaboration with VISAVÍ Festival, Italian Cultural Institute in Slovenia