Eva Bottega: »CANTATA«

With her solo project, Eva Bottega continues the artistic approach of her band Ménades with striking consistency. Voice, body, and text become inseparable: the performance operates less as a conventional concert than as an immersive total experience in which the body itself becomes a site of resistance, transformation, and interrogation.

At the centre of the Commissioned Work »CANTATA« is a queer-feminist exploration of mysticism, hysteria, and religious ecstasy, drawing on figures such as Joan of Arc as well as forgotten mystics and those absorbed into the canon of the Church. Inspired by the writings of Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault, and Georges Didi-Huberman, Eva Bottega examines the relationship between female-coded bodies, social control, and spiritual experience. Physical symptoms – unexplained fevers, trembling, paralysis – emerge as traces of a supposed proximity to God, or even as signs of demonic possession.

The performance unfolds as a journey through shifting emotional and physical states, moving from emptiness, rage, and melancholy towards a mystical form of harmony. Layered voices, choreography, lighting, and costume give rise to a ghostly hybrid figure, moving through ritual processes within the elements of a sparse bedroom setting. In its simplicity, the reduced scenography – centred on chairs and a chain – echoes the work of Pina Bausch and becomes a central choreographic element within the piece. The space functions not merely as backdrop, but as an essential instrument of the work itself.

What emerges is a sensorial ritual exploring femininity, hybridity, and the erotic and subversive relationship to the sacred. The work seeks to challenge gender binaries and dismantle normative ideas surrounding the body, spirituality, and identity.

This live performance is being created in collaboration with Héloïse Jocqueviel.