CEC company made their mark in Edinburgh at the 2014 Fringe: their Maria Addolorata was a wild, sexy duet that featured spirituality, sexuality and live beer drinking. They kick off manipulate 2015 with a visit to the Big Burns Supper, reprising Maria, before arriving at the Traverse with a new piece that takes Wagner’s final opera as a cue for a few thoughts on the tension between good and evil.

‘Wagner is very emotional and tragically ended,’ notes Carlo Massari, one of the two founders of CEC, ‘As usual, we want to ironically approach the universal dichotomy between good and evil.’ Tristissimo, the second chapter of their Trilogy of Pain is a duet that takes their mission to ‘pair down theatricality and bring truth to the stage’ and relates it to the legend of Tristan and Isolde.

‘We aim at finding rather a crude and straightforward language so that people can be shaken by it while recognising and acknowledging themselves as part of a humanity that belongs to them and that they belong to,’ Massari continues. Like Maria, Tristissimo is a duet, and is perhaps the most obviously dance based piece in the programme. Yet the dynamism of the choreography, and CEC’s insistence on chasing ‘truth’ on stage, ensures that it has more in common – at least emotionally –  with the rough energy of circus than traditional ballet or even contemporary.

 

‘Our dramaturgy stems from the body,’ Massari says. ‘It is based on physical relations and actions aimed at codifying feelings and stories of life and within our society.’ This approach is what lends their work a sense of veiled – or sometimes explicit – violence. The connection to Wagner’s vision – of total theatre, that attacks the audience through immensity and intensity – lies in the shared concern for grand themes and a theatre that is immediate and relevant. Massari’s vision for the company may lack the empire building fanaticism of Wagner (who had a special opera house built for his works), but refuses meek ambition.

‘Our new works are engendered by intuitions, by the desire to speak about something in particular like visions of today’s world, hope, or future pessimisms.’