The King’s Camera is duet between a dancer and a film maker.

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It depicts a world in which a King obsessed with his own image is followed by a camera whose only purpose is filming a documentary about a hypothetical grand “final” performance.

A narcissistic ballet lover, this King seeks excellence and precision in the gesture and fights against outer forces in order to impose his own plan and his own language.

He struggles to offer constantly a better version of himself, withstanding the clash between his will and a fragmented, broken body that doesn’t want to obey his ego, continuously searching the perfect pose but always missing some fundamental detail. 

With the purpose to create her own movie, the movie maker invades the stage itself thus challenging the King’s natural habitat.

Through the use of live filming techniques, movement, sound and light, together they create the illusion of an edited footage in a virtuosic display of skill and visual sensitivity, engaging in a dangerous battle between the mediums where the gaze will be the only winner.

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The work questions the relationship between what the camera shows and what in fact is really happening on stage as well as the necessity of

having control of one’s own image.

Behind the camera a person (Cindy Séchet), present but invisible for most of the time, walks through the dressing rooms and the backstage transforming this normally unused space into the set of a movie (horror, crime, comedy, cartoon and

so on).

Like in a movie, the editing of the filmed material becomes an essential element of the work and it informs the choreography itself.

Special effects and “montage” are explored not only as cinematographic elements but also as choreographic options.

On the scene the huge screen shows what is most relevant in the work: the image itself, served at its best.

Sometimes it is only the screen dominating the scene; sometimes it interacts with the performer on stage, raising the question if the final image is most important, or the way it is produced .

The screen becomes a sword with two blades. If on one sides it offers to the performer the possibility of duplicating himself, occupying thus more space in the frame of the stage, on the other side, because of its dimension, brightness, speed and privileged point of view, it competes with the performer, stealing the attention and forcing him to an impossible battle against himself.

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The piece, coproduced by Marche Teatro, Charleroi Danse, BTT and Motori di Ricerca, was premiered in June 2019 at InTeatro Festival, in Teatro della Luna.