Choreography, performance and concept: Tommy Cattin

Sound and visuals: Romain Tièche

Dramaturgic collaborator: Jade Albasini

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This solo is a confrontation — intimate, exposed, unflinching. The audience is close. Nothing is hidden. The body appears like a statue placed under a spotlight: still, evocative, fragile. The skin is detailed, the breath audible, every tremor visible.

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Vanitas explores silence not as emptiness, but as accumulation — of shame, memory, desire, and refusal. Through the repeated act of swallowing, the performance becomes a slow collapse. From iconic, almost sacred poses, the body begins to crack. Limbs slip, muscles give way, dignity erodes.

This is a dance of deterioration. A body trying to stay composed while everything inside begs to erupt. There are no words, only tension. Only a body too full to speak, too fractured to remain whole.

And still — it tries. It searches for verticality again, for coherence, for something like hope. This is not a return. It’s a haunting: of things never said, of affection withheld, of violence internalized.

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Conceived during the 2024 ATLAS program at ImPulsTanz Vienna and developed in residencies in Switzerland, Italy and Spain, the work reflects an ongoing choreographic practice: navigating queerness, vulnerability, and resistance through the body — in its most naked, broken, and courageous form.

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Partners and support:

Impulstanz International Dance Festival, Vienna, Austria
 

Residency:
Impulstanz International Dance Festival, Vienna, Austria

Network Danza Puglia, Bari, Italy

Nau Ivanow, Barcelona, Spain

Nunart Guinardó, Barcelona, Spain

Tanzhaus Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

Dansomètre, Vevey, Switzerland

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