Creations/
Creations/
on decay, decomposition and the abundance of life in death
„Mycelic Motions“ is a dance piece that explores the impossibility of human bodies becoming fungal. How does mycelium move through a world of flesh and individuality? When bodies dissolve and decompose their skin, do they become one or many? Responding to climate collapse and impending ecodeath, the performers embrace contaminated, collective forms beyond purity, inviting connection through mycelial structures.
Imagining a world beyond capitalism feels harder than imagining the end of the world. To break this barrier, the piece turns to mushrooms, envisioning a future with or as contamination. Experiencing this poetic story of death, grief, and the hypnotic liveliness of decay feels like one long exhale, entering mycelial time. From this liminal, microscopic perspective, we collectively become the fungus decomposing a dying world, a fable of hope in hopeless times.
Artistic direction, choreography and performance: Stella Covi
Co-creation and performance: Martina Gunkel
Music direction: Yannick Schrot
Musician: Florian Meerwein
Dramaturgy and text: Be Jeschke
Costumes and stage design: Cina Dilber
Video Sign Language: Laura Polster (deaf)
Light design: Stella Covi
Graphic: Carlos Casanova
Mycelic Motions is a production founded by the Kulturamt Stuttgart and Freie Tanz und Theaterszene. Supported by Produktionszentrum Tanz und Performance Stuttgart.
A special thanks to Fungi Foundation and Moritz Häcker for sharing with us their knowledge and experience about the fungi world.
Photography credits: Daniela Wolf
The day I journaled about that Cataclysmic event
Sneakers, cap, urban outfit. Zero. Voice and body share equal presence on stage, merging rhythm, sound, and movement into a single expressive field. This solo explores a return to raw, unfiltered physicality, with the voice as its most revealing and vulnerable extension.
It follows Zero, a character at a decisive turning point, moving through fragmented memories and futuristic visions in a suspended, imagined space. Curious, bold, and unafraid of imperfection, Zero balances vulnerability and play. An invitation to inhabit a liminal space where each gesture becomes an act of remembering.
In a time when censorship seems to permeate every aspect of our lives, Zero longs to voice what feels impossible to say—to break down walls and bring buried emotions to the surface. Zero yearns for life. Zero yearns for truth.
Yet Zero has no language of its own; it is up to the audience to discover and define its meaning for themselves.
Concept, choreography and performance: Stella Covi
Music arrangement: Yannick Schroth
Original track (that has yet being modified): INTCAEB by Caterina Barbieri
Photography Credits: Jo Grabowski
Die Ungehorsamen
"Die Ungehorsamen was born taking inspiration on Elisabetta Rasy's novel "Le disobbedienti. Storie di sei donne che hanno cambiato l'arte" (literally "TheDisobedient Ones. Stories of Six Women Who Changed Art").
The book features stories of six female artists, such as Artemisia Gentileschi and Charlotte Salomon, who transformed the art world over the past three centuries. By defying societal norms and patriarchal codes, they gave voice to their talent through rebellion.
These women stood out in their time. Artemisia Gentileschi, for instance, was not only a young prodigy and the first woman admitted to the Accademia d'Arte in Florence (1616) but also the first woman to take a rapist to court. Berthe Morisot was the first woman to exhibit with the Impressionists, and Frida Kahlo was the first to depict an abortion on canvas.
Two main aspects inspired me to reinterpret these women's stories through dance. First, they were ordinary women driven by passion and resilience, not seen as celebrities in their time. Second, their desire to engage with their bodies and convey messages through art resonates with the struggle all women share - to be themselves.
Driven by my love and interest in the history of these female artists, I began to consider how I could translate the remarkable lives of these women into dance and highlight certain historical moments that should never be forgotten. A study of the virtues attributed to each artist by the author of this novel, such as courage, persistence, rebellion, resilience, and passion, aims to answer the main question of this research: What does it mean to be courageous and transgressive in our society today, based on the life stories of these artists? What has changed compared to the centuries in which they lived?
"What does it mean to be transgressive and courageous in our society today?"
Artistic direction, concept & performance: Stella Covi
Live Music performance & Music composition:
Yannick Schroth, Benjamin Clauter
Light design: Stella Covi
Ordyh
ORDYH is a work that seeks connections between the surrounding natural spaces and the water everywhere around us. An ode to the present moment, the here and now, made with a body - flesh, fluids, emotions, everything that flows within us / within other bodies.
The ice is a fundamental element in ORDYH, as it embody the challenge with oneself, a process that leads to regaining the resilience of the self (once believed lost), and to fight that inner tangle, which, despite the fact that our body is composed of at least 50 % water, can become almost as heavy as a rock if left ripen for too long.
ORDYH is a moment in which two bodies, one warm and containing life and one completely frozen and lifeless, are related to each other to complete what might be named, in an intimate way, the "cancellation process": unavoidably, the warmth of the human body will slowly make disappear the ice mass. What will be left then?
The whole body is into play, starting from its flesh, finishing with its voice, integral part of this performance.
A body practice that which aims to create a palpable connection with the audience, challenging them to enter the performance with a simple but direct "action" proposal: break the ice.
Concept, Direction: Stella Covi
Choreography: Stella Covi
Music selection and live playing: Kosmas Dinh
Photography/Videography: Rowan Schratzberger
Au Revoir
Au Revoir was conceived from the desire of creating a moment to listen and observe: firstly, to what is happening inside the body (the breathing, the heartbeat, the warming up of the body temperature...) and secondly to what is happening around us.
In current times when when it is becoming increasingly difficult not to be distracted (even by simplest daily task), I felt the need to create a moment of suspended, silent pause.
Never in the moment, forever in the realm of possibility, always seeking for the next hit: this piece is meant to offer a safe space in which the audience can allow themselves to dream and let go of any rules.
You could say that Au Revoir it is also about different forms of communication. Combining the longing to discover unusual way to express with our bodies, we dived into the study of Morse code and used it in the composition of the piece.
Concept, Direction: Stella Covi
Choreography: Stella Covi in cooperation with the performers
Performers: Mei Chan, Marta Allocco, Fabienne Deskeer, Mirko Ingrao, Willer Rocha, Francisco Ladron de Guevara
Light design: Stella Covi
Costume design: Stella Covi
Am I Free
Idea and concept : Stella Covi
Dancers: Abraham Iglesias Rodriguez and Stella Covi
Music: Muslimgauze - Retourn Of Black September/staalplaat
Text: Clarice Lispector - Extract from "Agua Viva"
Voice: Ria Girard
Video: Markus Feifel Pargas
Not a City That Was
Concept & textile art: Maria Appleton
Performance: Stella covi
Video: Mirko Ingrao
It is not about death
It is about the virtual and the real.
About the real and its nature.
It is about so natural that seems unreal,
and distortion that is true.
It is about bodies in spaces
In places looking for them…
It is about fabric, fluid, water like it.
It is not about death,
It is not about a city that doesn’t exist
It is not about memory
But about a celebratory existence of the new.
About the present that is in front,
Rising, turning into future
In present space Onde presencialmente estou
It is about physicality
About the dough
About the power of physics and scientific looking through
Reliable - Perspective - incapable of being from one point.
It is about a space that is always a continuum:
vertically and horizontally.
It is about healing,
Sanus per Aquam,
It is about you - diving,
Me - observing
It is about Connection Interconnection and Interstitiality.
It is about you towards the hole
Leaning against
or under the whole.
A space that partially was non existent
If you didn’t, in it, exist
Now that you do
It is matter forever
It is the chance
The possibility
Of a reality, conceived, understood
It is not about preconception
It is The allowance for free conception
By you
Rising a city
A city of new beginnings
It is not about a city that was,
It’s is not about fixing
It’s is not about death
It is a sacred - standing - manifestation on being present
on zeitgeist
on you in space.
Future showings
The day I journaled about that Cataclysmic event
at Fitz Theater Stuttgart
December, 1st, 2026
© Günter Seeger