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Boko Nestor, “Le Manteau / Der Mantel / The Cloak”,  Benin 2018 (courtesy Elisabeth Masé)

The project “Le Manteau / Der Mantel / The Cloak” was initiated by Swiss artist and writer Elisabeth Masé in 2017: People of different cultures and religions gather around a table to embroider a cloak made of heavy red linen. Their subject is the idea of protection. By creating texts and ornaments of their own design, it is the participants who define what protection means to them. In 2018, the collaboration on the project by musicians and the Tchekpo Dance Company led to the production of a dance theatre show that debuted in Ouidah, Benin, West Africa and was then staged in Europe and the United States. Now the show comes to Trieste: Tchekpo Dance Company & Elisabeth Masé present “A Cloak for Trieste” on November 18 at the Sala Assicurazioni Generali of the Politeama Rossetti theatre, together with dancers Ange Kodro Aoussou-Dettmann, Florent Nikiema, Tobias Weikamp and the ArteffettoDanza students of Trieste.

Trieste Contemporanea hosts a meeting on Saturday 16 November at 7:00 pm to present the dance performance, in which the cloak is the protagonist as if it were a “Great Mother,” and to delve into the project and the artistic research that originated this theatre piece. Together with the artist Elisabeth Masé – who the Trieste public knows for the exhibition “Amerika. Give Me a Reason to Love You” she presented at the Studio Tommaseo in 2017 –, the choreographer Tchekpo Dan Agbetou and the dancers will discuss how this type of collective project forges social bonds through individual life stories and how it points to “protection” as the foundation of our social relationships. In the meeting some video documentary passages by Elisabeth Masé and Zoe Jungbluth on project’s phases of development will also be screened.