The Insect Dances / Gli Insetti

About the work

Gli Insetti (1978) is an intimate thirty-minute dance theater work for two performers, multiple projection screens, and walkie-talkies. Unlike traditional theater, which designs the lighting and environment around the scripted action, the content of Gli Insetti was determined by its scrimmed environment and low level lighting. The sound score consists of feedback from two walkie-talkies which were first employed for their antennae, subject and visual rhyme to the insects. MA FISH CO became known for their performance applications of low-tech hardware such as the old-fashioned slide projectors, flashlights, and walkie-talkies.

The work is based on the writings of the French entomologist Jean Henri Fabri, whose major writings between 1879 and 1907 are published as a ten-volume set under the title Souvenirs entomologiques. The English translations by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos, have placed Fabre's scientific observations within the libraries of precocious children and young adults. Charles Darwin maintained a correspondence with Fabre.

This is the first in the Italian series of performance works, Le Posizioni Veneziane. Companion pieces include Gli Insetti (1980) and Ti Sistemo Io (1983). Gli Insetti was invited to the Venice Biennale in 1980 by the San Francisco Institute of Italian Culture. A fourth work based on the tarantella was realized as a video short The Spider and The Fly.

This work and its companion pieces were unique to the field of interdisciplinary performance art. They were showcased at a diversity of art festivals such as The Ideas Festival (Telluride, Colorado), The San Francisco International Theatre Festival, Mue Danse Festival (Montreal, Canada), and CRT (Center for Research in Theater, Milan, Italy). Detailed information can be downloaded here:

• The Drama Review (Dec. 1980):  Gail Bochenek, “Two Performance Pieces by Margaret Fisher"