The project has its roots in one of the artistic disciplines I loved the most while growing up: dance, and particularly the world of dance theatre.
I had the opportunity to come into contact with dance theatre around the age of 15, specifically through the Wuppertal Tanztheater of Pina Bausch, to which I became especially attached. Dance theatre is not a ballet genre nor a true artistic movement, but rather a complex phenomenon in the history of 20th-century dance. It emerged in West Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s, thanks to five pioneers: Pina Bausch (the most renowned among them), Reinhild Hoffmann, Susanne Linke, Gerhard Bohner, and Hans Kresnik.

The reference to theatre is only due to its apparent "theatrical dimension," which actually belongs more to romantic ballet. In contrast, dance theatre seeks to recover a primordial dimension—a connection between gesture and action, and between gesture and word. Dance theatre, therefore, is a form of dance often rich in allegory and symbolism, born from the fusion of theatre and visual arts.

What has always fascinated me, and led me to undertake this project, is precisely this break from the dogmas of classical dance, and the lasting, ever-relevant legacy of Pina Bausch. A revolutionary and extraordinary rupture meant to bring dance and life back to something more authentic, primal, and deeply felt.

With the project TAN-Z, I wanted not only to pay tribute to Pina Bausch, but also to highlight that rupture by applying it to entirely new and contemporary themes. Information overload is a phenomenon that occurs when a person receives such a large amount of information that it creates disorder and confusion, making it impossible to make a decision. The exponential development of technology has contributed to the spread of this phenomenon.

The vast amount of information available through new media, such as the Internet, can inhibit our ability to filter and take a clear stance on a specific topic.
Often, this overwhelming flow of information is perceived as “noise” in cognitive terms, since the same fact can have completely opposite interpretations or be contradicted by another piece of information. This constant tension manifests not only through a kind of hyperacusis and visual fatigue in perceivable reality, but also through the translation of that noise into thoughts—a constant, perpetual, and excessive stream of thoughts, a condition that can also be defined as overthinking.

Overthinking prevents a person from staying in the here and now; this once again highlights how the excess among the many possibilities of being ultimately prevents one from truly being. The title TANZ embodies not only the theme explored in the short film but also a seed of hope. In German, tanz means “dance,” but its root derives from the Sanskrit tan, whose meaning refers to the concept of tension. I therefore wanted to highlight a potentially pathological tendency within our society—particularly in Generation Z (the “technological generation”): excess.
Thus, the title “TAN-Z” can be interpreted as “Tension Z.”