The courage to change

Alessio Russo

Title	The courage to change
Author	Alessio Russo
Date	07.04.2021
Institutional affiliation	Bachelor Contemporary Dance (DDK_FTA_BCD.alle) Disziplin Tanz - Fachhochschulbereich (DDK_FTA_FH.alle)
Study path	Bachelor
Keywords	Bachelor Contemporary Dance Diplome 2021 Diplomprojekt
Genre / discipline	Tanz
Description	The courage to change BA Project by Alessio Russo My graduate project is titled "The Courage to Change" and its main purpose is to go against all sorts of psychological bullying that leads the most sensitive people to not believe in themselves, and therefore have more difficulty understanding their role in the world. So the themes I deal with are the need for self-expression and the acceptance of our body and mind, topics that are similar in my thesis. When I decided to devise a small film to represent this topical, I thought a lot about what images the outside audience might remember in order for my work to serve something greater. In this film I portray myself as the embodiment of any twenty-one year old boy, living a silent day lost in thought, until he looks in front of the mirror and sees imprinted on himself all the words that other people have said with the goal of hurting him. Through this video narration I wrote a monologue and recorded my voice so that the viewer would be guided by my words to better understand the meaning of what he would have seen, and thus metabolize it. Towards the middle of the film there is a transition that completely reverses the scenario, at that moment I represent another topic taken from my thesis and of personal interest: Boylesque, which is a discipline that was born after the evolution of dance, and obviously takes its origin from Burlesque but taking as protagonist the male gender. This choice was purely subjective and certainly daring because of the costumes and images that were recorded, but my goal was to leave an imprint with a dance style that is not often mentioned because it is considered a niche. "The courage to change" is a hymn to mutual respect and support between human beings, and also a voice of comfort for all the people who have suffered like me who need to feel less alone. In this film I lay bare my body, my soul and my thoughts that are expressed by movements, images and words and I hope that the audience will be able to perceive it too. I wanted to give my university career a respectful closure, dealing with human reflections and at the same time with what as brought me this far: Dance.
Internet links (URL)	https://www.zhdk.ch/diplome/diplome-tanz/alessio-r…