• performance
• Like A Virgin
• mythos

In her award-winning solo performance, choreographer and director Teresa Vittucci examines one of the most important and significant female figures of Judeo-Christian societies: the Virgin Mary. With great humour and curiosity, Vittucci unravels the queer potential of this icon who embodies both the sympathetic woman and grieving mother and is culturally regarded as the epitome of purity, innocence and perfection. In her piece, Vittucci sets out on a crusade of vulnerability with the aim of rehabilitating the matriarch Maria as a powerful heroine and an ambassador of queer feminism.

Any analysis of the Virgin Mary will necessarily have to – as the name implies – begin with a deconstruction of her virginity. Before we can approach Mary as a human being and a personality with moving traits like vulnerability, compassion and love – which ultimately incorporate the feminist and agitating element of an ideal social contract –, we must challenge this greatest attribution of all: her allegedly intact body. 

Teresa Vittucci sets out to trace the hymen: The German term “Jungfernhäutchen”, virgin’s skin, attests that it symbolises chastity and reserve and is intended to preserve and prove these attributes. Hate me, Tender reveals the hymen to be a regulating construct that enjoys an appallingly broad validity in the discourse on female sexuality. Vittucci’s performance will bring down this notion.

This solo has won the Swiss Dance Award and the PREMIO Advancement Award. It has been presented at numerous festivals and theatres across Europe since 2019 and constitutes the first part of Teresa Vittucci’s trilogy in praise of vulnerability. Following the duet Doom, which was created in 2021, the third and final part of the trilogy will be premiered at Tanzhaus Zürich in March 2024. At Deutsches Theater Berlin, Teresa Vittucci will once again examine the first part of her work and update if for the Box-venue: Hate me, Tender_ Revisited.

• Winner of the Swiss Dance Award and the Premio Young Talent Award