Depero Futuristi

“Reimagining a Century-Old Ballet Through Technology”

Project Title: Depero Futuristi
Team Members: Matt McLean, Cory Garfin, Goutham Dindukurthi, Carlos Hurtado, Francisco Souki, Kana Otaki, EJ Lee
Faculty Advisor: Don Marinelli, Franco Sciannameo

The Idea

Inspired by a century-old ballet of the same name, Balli Plastici reimagined avant-garde performance art through a modern lens. Originally staged in 1918 by Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero, the original production featured surreal, puppet-like figures and radical staging. Nearly a hundred years later, the ETC was invited to bring this piece back to life: not as a reconstruction, but as a creative re-interpretation that fused performance, interactivity, and digital media.

Performa — an arts nonprofit that hosts an international performance biennial of the same name — and the Museum of Arts and Design tasked the ETC student team with turning the piece into a celebration of art history and a look into the future of artistic practice. The goal was to honor the spirit of the original while using 21st-century tools to invite new audiences into its world.

The Process

The Balli Plastici team set out to achieve two goals: stage a reinterpretation of the Futurist puppet performance Balli Plastici for the Performa 09 Festival, and develop a puppetry animation software accessible to anyone.

Their work was grounded in extensive research into Italian Futurism, studying original manifestos and writings by Depero, Marinetti, and Balla. These insights shaped the team’s aesthetic and conceptual approach by deepening their understanding of the Futurists’s key tenets of abstraction, mechanical motion, and anti-naturalism.

In order to work on both deliverables simultaneously, the team used their in-progress software to create the live performance. This allowed for real-time testing and iteration, with real usage guiding the design of the software’s features and user flow. Rather than replicate professional animation tools, the team focused on simplicity and play, creating a lightweight, mouse-and-keyboard interface that encouraged creative experimentation over technical complexity.

From the interactive lobby installation to the digital puppet performance on stage, the experience was choreographed with care — honoring the past while imagining a new, tech-enabled future for avant-garde theater.

The Impact

• Featured in New York Magazine, TimeOut New York, Art in America, and the GSTF International Journal of Computing
• Screened in Pittsburgh at the Three Rivers Arts Festival and Warhol Museum, in Washington, DC at the Italian Cultural Institute, and internationally in Italy, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore
• Bronze winner for Art Direction and Use of Animation at the 31st Annual Telly Awards

Balli Plastici showcased how ETC teams can act as cultural translators — taking ideas from the past and reshaping them with cutting-edge digital tools. The Depero Futuristi managed to integrate art and technology — the past and the future — seamlessly and brilliantly. They were lauded nationally and internationally as a result.

Not only was the project itself a success, but the team that worked on it ended up forming life-long connections. A decade later, the team reunited in Pittsburgh, flying in from all over the world to spend time together over a decade after they graduated.