BIOGRAPHY

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BAROKTHEGREAT is a group founded in 2008 by the performer-choreographer Sonia Brunelli and the musician and composer Leila Gharib, based in Verona (Italy). The nature of the experience they present is expressed both in the field of live performance and mediated by the audiovisual, where quality is revealed in the balance and in the ancestral bond between dance and sound, in the precise intermediate territory of these two disciplines.

Their practice stages glimpses of interior worlds, an imaginary often of invention and fantasy sought among the multiple dynamics of adherence and interference between choreographic gesture and sound composition, relying on an architecture of space that also allows the construction of scenographic objects treated as bodies to be brought to life.

Their works have been invited by (partial list): Centro Pecci (Prato), Schauspiel Leipzig (Leipzig), Sujets à Vif Festival d’Avignon (Avignon), Set Up! Punta della Dogana (Venezia), Grand Theatre (Groningen), Live Arts Week (Bologna), Theatre Frascati (Amsterdam), Bozar (Brussels), Kunstfest Weimar (Weimar), Netmage (Bologna), Schaubühne Lindenfels (Leipzig), Drodesera-Centrale Fies (Trento), Santarcangelo Festival (Rimini), Rencontres Chorégraphiques (Paris), FOG Triennale Milano Performing Arts, FAR° Festival des Arts Vivants (Nyon), Steirischer Herbst (Graz), Brut (Wien), Short Theatre (Roma), Vie Scena Contemporanea (Modena), Festival Crisalide (Forlì), Interzona (Verona), Teatro Grande (Brescia), Teatro Comandini (Cesena), BUFFALO Festival/ MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea (Roma).

Barokthegreat’s productions are: The Origin (2008), Barok (2008), Wrestling-Barokthegreat vs guests (2010), Fidippide (2011), Russian Mountains (2011), Kind of Magic (2011), Indigenous-sound drama (2012), Kobra (2012), The attack of the Clone (2013 and 2023), Victory Smoke (2014), Babakoto (2017), Ghost (2018), Pianeta Mezzasfera (2024), Doveva centrare il sole (2025) abd Fortunate Ricerche series (2025-ongoing).

Further lines of research have branched off: Palestra Espressiva a movement creative and collective practice, and the music project Sequoyah Tiger.

They won the MONDO Award, Italia Creativa – Young Italian Artists — 2010 in Forlì with the show The Origin. Finalists of the Tuttoteatro Award, Best Teaser, 1st ed. 2018 with Ghost. Selected with the video In The Van for So Fresh! Video Art Competition, 2nd ed. 2009, promoted by the Monfalcone Municipal Gallery of Contemporary Art together with the Amici della Galleria Spazzapan association.