A scientist, a butcher, three chicks, and a salmon.

Corn grows to giant sizes, turkeys have lost their ability to reproduce, cows produce an incredible amount of milk, and dachshunds stretch in absurd proportions.

In the frantic quest to improve human living standards, animal welfare is systematically violated.

Selective Breeding explores complex themes tied to survival, genetic manipulation, and the ethical implications of enhancing species through artificial selection. The performance uses the concept of a “kaleidoscope” to reflect on these issues, questioning the relationship between humans and consumerism, land and exploitation, dignity and the protection of the ecosystem’s life. The aim is to trace a scenario that opens the door to a renewed awareness.

The protagonists are some of the actors that have inhabited more than 3.5 billion years of evolution on Earth so far, essential for the survival of Homo sapiens.

Embracing Darwin’s theory of evolution through natural selection, we observe how it is not necessarily the strongest individual who survives, but the one who best adapts to the surrounding environment.

Selective breeding, on the other hand, promotes only the survival of humankind—in prosperity and luxury; there is an undeniable arrogance in every human manipulation of nature.

While Darwin’s research and the practice of selective breeding are distant from one another, they share a common principle: survival.

This contradiction reflects the relationship between science and art. From this, emerges our curiosity to investigate the mutual influence these two disciplines—seemingly antithetical—have on a procedural level. A great dose of creativity is needed to make scientific discoveries, and in our case, artistic expression through dance is often a product of knowledge.