bio

Calderoni-Caleo met in 2012 at the Teatro Valle Occupato during Motus’s Animale Politico Project. They created a nomadic atelier of workshops and artistic residences. Since 2017, they have been teaching in the Visual Arts Laboratory at IUAV University of Venice. Following their participation in the 2018 Biennale College Teatro with a Masterclass, they created KISS, a performance project with 23 performers produced by the Santarcangelo Festival, CSS Udine and Motus Vague. For the Queering Platform of the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, they co-curate the SO IT IS transnational project  (https://www.soitis.art/it). In 2021 they took part in Flu水o, the crossdisciplinary project directed by Alessandro Sciarroni and winner of Italian Council (9th Edition, 2020). In 2022, they created the installation Pick Pocket Paradise for the exhibition “Espressioni con frazioni” at Castello di Rivoli – Museum of Contemporary Art (Torino). They are associate artists of the Italian Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. 

In 2023, their performance The Present Is Not Enough premiered in Hamburg, co-produced by Azienda Speciale Palaexpo – Mattatoio | Progetto Prender-si Cura, Kampnagel (Hamburg), Kunstencentrum Vooruit vzw (Ghent), and Motus Vague. For the 2025–2028 triennium, they will serve as co-curators of the Short Theatre Festival (Rome), together with Silvia Bottiroli and Michele Di Stefano. Since 2025, they have been associate artists at BASE (Milan).
In 2025, their latest work temporale {a lesbian tragedy} premiered, co-produced by VIELNURVIEL (Ghent), Motus Vague, Emilia Romagna Teatro ERT / Teatro Nazionale.
Beyond their artistic projects, they share, in truth, a bit of everything.

Silvia Calderoni  is an actress, performer and author. She started developing artistically from a very young age with the company Teatro Valdoca, performing in several productions including Paesaggio con fratello rotto (2005). Since 2006, she has been an active member of the company Motus, and she has performed in the shows Rumore Rosa, A place, X (ics) - Racconti crudeli della giovinezza, Crac, Let The Sunshine In, Too late!, Iovadovia, Tre atti pubblici, Alexis. Una tragedia greca, Nella tempesta, Caliban Cannibal, King Arthur, Tutto brucia, and Frankenstein (a love story) which were hosted by many national and international festivals. She is the protagonist of The Plot is the Revolution alongside Judith Malina, the legendary founder of The Living Theatre. Since 2015, she has been touring major international theatres and festivals with the solo MDLSX, for which she also co-writes the dramaturgy with Daniela Nicolò. In 2021 she is on stage again for Teatro Valdoca with the works Enigma. Requiem per Pinocchio, and then Bestemmia (2025). 
She was awarded the 2009 Ubu Award for Best Actress under 30, and in 2015 she received the 9th Virginia Reiter Award for Best Italian Actress under 35. In 2009, she received the Ubu Award for best actress under 30. 
For the cinema, she played Kaspar in La leggenda di Kaspar Hauser (2012), the cult film directed by Davide Manuli. She also acted in: Last Words (2020), by Jonathan Nossiter; the Sky TV series Romulus, directed by Matteo Rovere; and Non mi uccidere (2021) by Andrea De Sica. She plays the lead role in the miniseries Ouverture of Something that Never Ended (2020), directed by Gus Van Sant and Alessandro Michele, and in the film and video opera Moonbird (2022) by Rä Di Martino. She was an associate artist with the Queering Platform at Hong Kong’s Kowloon Cultural District (2020–23) and worked as an artistic consultant for Sherocco Festival (Ostuni).

Ilenia Caleo is a performer, activist and researcher. Since 2000 she has worked as an actress, performer and dramaturg in the contemporary theatre, collaborating with various companies and directors, including Davide Iodice, Yoshi Oida, Lisa Natoli, and Motus. She has shaped the dramaturgical development of Tutto brucia (2021), Frankenstein (a love story) (2023) by Motus, and Extinction / les Phalènes (2022) by choreographer Alexandre Roccoli.
With a background in philosophy, she works on corporeality, feminist epistemologies, experimental practices in the performing arts, new institutions, and forms of cultural labor. She teaches at NABA (Rome) and at IUAV University of Venice, where she leads the course “Performance, Gender and Sexuality Studies”. She is also a co-founder of Master’s program in Gender Studies and Politics at Roma Tre University. She was a member of the research group of the porject “INCOMMON. In praise of community. Shared creativity in arts and politics in Italy (1959-1979)”, ERC Starting Grant 2015, directed by Annalisa Sacchi. She has recently published Performance, materia, affetti. Una cartografia femminista, Bulzoni 2021 and co-edited with Annalisa Sacchi and Piersandra Di Matteo In fiamme. La performance nello spazio delle lotte 1967/1979, b-r-u-n-o 2021. She is one of the contributing authors to Choreographies of the Impossible, the catalog of the 35th São Paulo Biennial. 
She is an activist in the commons and queer-feminist movements, involved in several networks of artistic and precarious struggles.