The mk group has been involved in choreography and performance since 2000 and revolves around an original core of performers and shared and transversal projects, including the constant collaboration with musician Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch.
The group was immediately invited to the most important festivals of the new scene in Italy and abroad.
Among the productions of recent years: Bermudas (2017 / 2018), a work on perpetual motion and pure movement with more than 60 performances to its credit, received the Danza&Danza award as best Italian production 2018 and the UBU award 2019 as best dance performance in the durational and participatory version Bermudas_forever; Parete Nord (2018) is an international collaboration co-produced by Torinodanza and hosted among others at Teatro Argentina in Rome, the Triennale in Milan and the Pergola in Florence; with Pezzi anatomici (2020) begins a new cycle of investigation open to the public in all its phases, built around the research work in the rehearsal room and the stable cohabitation of the group at the Teatro India in Rome for the project Oceano Indiano 2020-21, a cohabitation from which the collective project Radio India was also born – Premio Rete Critica 2020 and Premio Speciale Ubu 2021; the performance Eden, conceived in 2020 by the BolzanoDanza/Tanz Bozen Festival, with choreography by Carolyne Carlson, Michele Di Stefano and Rachid Ouramdane received the Danza&Danza special prize of the year and evolved autonomously into a series of site-specific programmes, including the version conceived for the installation of the sculpture côté cour / côté jardin by Eva Jospin in Reggio Emilia- festival APERTO in 2021. In 2021, mk, in collaboration with Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch and the American singer of Iraqi origin Amir ElSaffar, presents the new production Maqam at the Festival Aperto in Reggio Emilia and subsequently at Torinodanza: the show is the first appointment of Ring – a network project of four Italian festivals that aims to support the production of an artist and his company every year and to include it in the programme of each of the partners (in addition to the festivals mentioned, FOG Triennale di Milano and BolzanoDanza). Sfera is the 2022 production created in collaboration with ORBITA | Spellbound Centro di Produzione della danza contemporanea, Festival Short Theatre and the project Crossing the sea, with the contribution of Regione Lazio: the creation of an environment made up of vocal emissions and dynamic articulations of the body experiments with the use of language outside the stereotypes of dance-theatre and seeks in language a further means of deepening the choreographic gesture.
Also in 2022, the project Piscina Mirabilis was realised at the Triennale in Milan, at the Be festival in Birmingham (UK), and at the Pecci Museum in Prato. The project is addressed to a vast community of people, dancers-dancers, performers, actors-actresses, athletes-athletes, bodies, figures and people whose address is to project themselves onto the stage: before the performance, before the rehearsal, the workshop, the training, the warm-up, the body, a place dedicated to research, where to immerse oneself in pure happening, without hierarchies of power and risk, without construction, transmission, reflection. A strange habit to build without discourse, a pool to return to
The touring of performances is flanked by an intense activity of conferences, workshops and experimental proposals, including the Platform of Balinese Dance at the Santarcangelo Festival (2014 and 2015), projects for the 2013-14-15 BiennaleDanza and BiennaleTeatro 2019, a constant dialogue with the Scuola Paolo Grassi in Milan, the Anghiari Dance Hub, training and research workshops for the Scuola del Teatro Stabile in Turin and for the IUAV University.
Michele Di Stefano has received choreographic commissions from Aterballetto, Korean National Contemporary Dance Company, Nuovo Balletto di Toscana and the Ballet de Lorraine for a new creation in 2023. He is a consultant for the dance programming (GRANDI PIANURE) of the Teatro di Roma, he is co-curator with Francesca Corona of the Giacimenta project for Matera 2019 and creator of the performance cycles TROPICI (Angelo Mai) and BUFFALO (Palazzo delle Esposizioni, MACRO Roma and Museo Nazionale Romano). In 2018 he curated the outdoor section (Outdoor) of the BolzanoDanza-Tanz Bozen Festival.
In 2014 he received the Silver Lion for Innovation in Dance at the Venice Biennale and in 2018 the Nico Garrone Award.
He is an associate artist at the Milan Triennale for the three-year period 2022-24.
In 2012, Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, by Michele Di Stefano and Margherita Morgantin, a text of choreographic instructions and meteorological reports, was published by Quodlibet. Since 2010, the group is supported by the Ministry of Culture.
