SLEEK MAGAZINE #88
“TEETERING ON THE PRECIPICE - AND THE DESIRE TO PERSEVERE”
Print and Online, 2026
Interview and Words: Nisha Merit
Photography: Michel Comte
AMANDA DONATO and MICHEL COMTE are further collaborating on a continuously evolving performance, CHAOS.
“Amanda Donato’s visual language feels Berlin. The minimalist monochrome of black, grey and midnight blue in her stage worlds is broken only by beams of light, a red rope detail – and the rawness of a moving body. Though this rawness, which is so instrumental, and the allegory to Berlin resist simple clichés that one might think of. Rather than coldness or darkness, her work insists that life continues to pulse regardless of circumstance. Inscribed into her choreography, it draws us to the granular: muscles articulating, repetition and rhythm conversing, exhaustion pushing the body forward. In our conversation, Donato reflects on her trajectory from Toronto to Berlin and on two seminal works, CUSP and A WAKE, considering a human condition suspended between states that feels highly topical. From personal lineage to a collective sensing of the present, she translates humanness into motion and tells us what performance can offer beyond the stage – leading us to our own bodily awareness to make space for community.”