Riccardo Pedri

HEAVYMETAL

Floor acrobatics, suspension, dance

HEAVYMETAL is a solo in which the author confronts his body with the weight of 30 m² of chainmail weighing 100 kg. This face-to-face artificially augments gravity, transforming the stage into a laboratory where movement emerges from the friction between density, resistance and surrender.

The chainmail plays a triple role: apparatus that constrains movement, scenography that sculpts space, costume that transforms the image of the body. Under the constant pressure of the metal, the body ceases to be a stable entity: it reconfigures itself into a hybrid assemblage, inhabiting the border between the human and the non-human.

Biography

Riccardo Pedri is an Italian circus artist specialising in aerial disciplines. After studying political science in Bologna, he trained at FLIC Circus School in Turin and then at Académie Fratellini in Paris. In 2021, he worked with Les Colporteurs on Cœur Sauvage, before performing in Humanidad at Teatro Circo Price in Madrid.

In 2023, he co-founded Collectif des Cordes and worked as an outside eye on Kiss the Beast (La Barque Acide), Le paradoxe des jumeaux (Maison Courbe) and Lignes (Noémie Deumié). Since 2023, he has been leading research classes in arial discipline at ACAPA Fontys (Tilburg) and the Académie Fratellini, and completed a dramaturgy training at CNAC (2024–2025). In 2025, he began developing Perdre le sol, a quartet for corde lisse supported by the company Gratte-Ciel, before performing in Josef K. in 2026 (Théâtre de la Tempête, directed by Clément Poirée). That same year, he began developing HEAVYMETAL as both author and performer — premiere scheduled for October 2028, showcase at PERPLX (Belgium).