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A multisensory performance about me and my struggle with expected behaviours
Agnese Valmaggia
Location: [vdm_event_location]
Dates:
[vdm_eventbuttons]- GENRE: Multimedia performance, Music theatre, Storytelling
- THEME: Changing the Norm, History Re-told, The female voice
- LANGUAGE: English
- Attention: a lot of sensory stimuli (light and/or sound), Earplugs recommended
- Toilet for wheelchair users: no, Wheelchair accessible: yes
duration of the performance: [vdm_event_duration]
If I had been born 100 years ago, I wouldn’t have been a drummer: it simply wasn’t “normal”, a female drummer in fascist Italy. This thought fascinates me: what else could I have been, in another life? And what might I still become, shaped by a future I cannot imagine? Driven by this curiosity, I use the drums as a lens to explore the invisible rules that shape us: mindsets and stereotypes have changed, but from the perspective of a future society, how far is there still to go?
How many things are now ’normal’ and will look so wrong in 100 years? ‘I Never Lie’ is a solo performance where music, visuals and storytelling come together to question what we take for granted in our daily lives. A drum set becomes the beating heart of the show, surrounded by triggers, electronics, samples and immersive visuals – all controlled live.
Biography
Agnese Valmaggia is an Italian drummer, composer and multidisciplinary artist based in Rotterdam. Her work explores identity, perception and the unspoken rules of everyday life, building entire worlds with a drum kit, a laptop and her own point of view.
With a background in jazz and a curiosity for storytelling, she uses rhythm and technology to question how we behave, who we are and what we could become. During her Master’s in jazz composition at Codarts (2022–2024), she conducted an artistic research on the use of samples in the compositional process. This investigation became the foundation for her current solo project, ‘I Never Lie’, which premieres in Rotterdam in 2025. Parallel to her solo work, Agnese performs as a drummer with various bands in the Netherlands and abroad, including the nine-headed collective Parra.dice. In 2021, she released ‘But still’, the debut album of her own group, Valmaggia Project.