IRMÃ-sister

What does it take to become close to someone? And, ultimately, what does it mean? Considering these questions and starting from shared experience, the piece portrays the dynamics occurring when we build strong relationships with one another.

An intricate journey of conflict and vulnerability, tenderness and anger, misunderstanding and support. A powerful yet attentive duet, with which DAMAEDANCE want to focus attention on the way women’s bodies and emotions are displayed on stage.

DAMAEDANCE’s mesmerising outdoor work IRMÃ-sister is an exhilarating, cutting-edge exploration of the beauty and challenges of women’s relationships, looking at how they affect and shape the way we perceive ourselves and our environment.

Narrated with an athletic and restless movement language, two women face a journey through conflict and harmony, tenderness and anger, misunderstanding and support, from which they emerge with a renewed understanding of themselves and the other.

Complex and thought-provoking, IRMÃ-sister challenges preconceptions about women’s representation on stage, celebrating their strength and power and ultimately portraying women, who have weight, can sustain weight and at the same time display vulnerability.

DAMAEDANCE is a platform created in 2018 by Manchester-based dance artists Alice Bonazzi and Sara Marques to collaborate, produce and share their artistic vision through dance. Respectively from Bologna (Italy) and Porto (Portugal), they met in 2017 during their time as apprentice dancers with Company Chameleon in Manchester.

Here they had the opportunity to work extensively together, exploring and deepening especially their knowledge of contact, partnering and improvisation under the direction of artistic directors Kevin Edward Turner and Anthony Missen. It’s during this time that the seed of the idea for IRMÃ-sister, their first duet, was planted. Alongside DAMAEDANCE, Alice and Sara keep pursuing their independent careers as performers.