Wounded Solo on Identity and Inheritance

ImpulsTanz [ENA] In POOR GUY, part of the [8:tension] series at ImPulsTanz 2025, Austrian-Italian performer Luigi Guerrieri delivers a sharply tuned, physically rich solo that slices through the tangled jungle of personal history, identity politics, and inherited narratives with intelligence, irony, and astonishing presence. He is presenting himself under the extended name Luigi Iesus Guerrieri Civitareale Morelli.

Guerrieri Civitareale Morelli unpacks the complexity of his name as an entry point into the autoethnographic performance. What begins as a verbal monologue about naming and familial entanglement unfolds into a full-body excavation of selfhood. Movement here is less about form and more about process—a continuous, often humorous negotiation between past and present, role and reality.

Guerrieri shifts between styles with remarkable ease: moments of clownish gesture dissolve into poised stillness, fragmented dance phrases mutate into bursts of theatrical wit. This is choreography as lived narrative—elastic, unresolved, and pulsing with contradiction. His ability to animate abstract questions—What is inherited? What is chosen? What is performed?—through immediate and relatable embodiment is the core strength of the work. POOR GUY is funny, smart, and devastatingly human. In confronting narcissism with self-aware charm, Guerrieri doesn’t lecture; he invites us to crawl across the chaotic landscape of the self and perhaps, like him, find something honest in the absurd. A standout debut.