CITIES IN MOTION / Co-Creating Multiplicity

A community-based, immersive dance theatre format by Francesco Vecchione

© Ralf Silberkuhl

Every city has a body. Every neighbourhood has a voice. Every person carries a story that has never been told on a stage.

Cities in Motion is a participatory dance theatre format that travels. It arrives in a city, listens to it, and builds a performance from within it… with its people, its communities, its memories, its contradictions. Each edition is unique. The methodology is the same. The result is always different.

Rooted in the belief that art is not a product to be consumed but a process to be lived, Cities in Motion brings together professional dancers, musicians, visual artists and local communities as equal co-authors of a shared creative act. Through workshops, open rehearsals and immersive performances, the boundaries between performer and audience, between art and everyday life, dissolve.

The format draws on The Living Body methodology developed by Francesco Vecchione… a somatic, improvisational practice that awakens presence, curiosity and trust. No dance experience is required. Every body belongs.

The process culminates in an immersive performance that transforms the hosting venue into a living organism… corridors, rooms and unexpected spaces become scenes, each one breathing with the stories and cultures of the people who built it. A world made of mirrors within mirrors, where every reflection belongs to someone in the room.

After each edition, the format continues with Nachhall der Many, a series of open post-performance gatherings combining live excerpts, music, moderated dialogue and community voices. Art meets discourse. Dance meets conversation.

© Jeng Mercado

FOR THE YOUNG

Cities in Motion also has a branch dedicated to children and young people.

The Story Inside Us is a dance and theatre workshop for ages 5 to 15, rooted in the same values. Here, movement becomes language, imagination leads the way and every child is gently invited to open the door to the world within them. We don’t rehearse perfection. We welcome presence.

Through guided movement, storytelling, collaborative creation and a final open sharing, children discover that their stories matter… and that offering those stories to others is an act of bravery and beauty.

Along the way, each child is invited to explore many languages of making… dance, music, painting, drawing, sewing and craft. Not as skills to master, but as doors to open. Because sometimes a story needs a needle and thread to be told. Sometimes it needs a brush, a beat, or simply a body moving freely through space.

Everything unfolds in a warm, playful and relaxed environment, guided and supported at every step by professional artists and educators who believe that every child already carries a universe inside them. We are simply here to make room for it.