Hi! I'm Rocco, a movie addict, music lover, people observer, coffee drinker and gadget user...but most of all, I'm a mime artist and this is my story:
Birth of a Passion
Chapter 1: It happened just some years after I was born. In 1987, my older brother got the idea of taking five-years-old Rocco on tour with his breakdance group. I loved this world: cool music, cool clothes and damn cool moves all around me. So I became a little robot and in each show in the many clubs around my hometown Grossenhain, my brother winded me up and I was running around like a little robot toy. Nothing special as far as I can recall. But the audience loved the fact, that I was very young. I remember loads of smiling faces around me, friendly masses, big rounds of applause and cheer in even bigger locations. Now I know, these places were mostly small village clubs. But in these days it felt awesome. Being up late at night, hanging around with people ten years older than me and having the chance to perform on a stage. What a fantastic time.
Chapter 2: 1995. I was 14 years old and the big talent contest of my school was calling for entries. Fuel to my fire! I created a little mime performance not knowing anything about this art form. To the title song of Beverly Hills Cop, Axel F, I entered he stage wearing strange black jogging clothes and some funny sun-glasses. The little robot was back again. Within three minutes, I presented some self-taught mime moves like doing the wall, pulling the rope etc. put together to a little story named "Clumsy Fellow". Suddenly, my show was over. The following second of silence was a moment I remember as an eternal one. Time stopped just to prepare for the wave coming afterwards. This wave of loudest cheer, of continous clapping set the course. My heart went into flames. I will become a mime artist...
The early Years
1996. The next talent show was waiting. So I teamed up with my best friend in class, Stefan Wabner. With two people on stage, you simply got much more possibilities. "The invention" was born. A mime play about a mad scientist creating his own robot (guess who). The robot escapes at night and in a dramatic ending, the scientist is finding his lost creation but destroys it accidentally. Six minutes of shaky mime action to the 90s dream dance music of Robert Miles. The feedback was awesome again and I knew, this is the right path. Directly after the performance we got our first official booking. 50 German Marks (25 €) for a 15-minutes show on a village fair with a power blackout exactly in the middle of our play. Early adventures and the beginning of a life chock-full of stories like this.
Celebrating Mime Style
2003. After many performances for my school, local shops, little fashion shows and loads of little events with the need for inexpensive culture, I wanted to improve. So I moved to Berlin visiting a private theater school with a master class for mime. I totally fell in love with the city and the fact that I'm still here is the proof for my love really being a big one. Just the school wasn't my thing, since I felt it was working against my run. I wanted to go out. I wanted to perform. So, after one and a half year I left to jump into professionalism. In 2005, Stefan also moved to Berlin and we founded "metroccolis" (a mix of Fritz Lang‘s "Metropolis" and my name) and we started to work hard on our first feature-length mime show called "Electricity in the Blood", which we premiered in our hometown in April. A ticket for this show is still hanging on my wall and I still get excited thinking of it. And back at this time the excitement was so big, that I was lying at the emergency room for a couple of hours one day before the show. I hope you understand why I speak about passion, when I speak about mime. It has always been a 200% way to me. Every single heartbeat going the same direction.
I'm your personal Robot
Perfect time to write about my vision of mime. I‘ve never been a fan of having a wardrobe stuffed with different silly costumes for all needs of even more silly requests.I am a purist. I don't need anything to perform a good mime play besides my body, a square meter of space and minimum one person who is watching. But in 2006, my very own special act - a masked one - came into being, accidentally while creating an outdoor performance, for which I wanted to play a window mannequin. And of course, it was a robot. But this robot wasn't silver. Instead, a white creature jumped into my life, nothing but white during the first months, later elegantly dressed in black. And still, this act was confirming my purist sense of mime. A clear vision of a neutral entity just getting its characteristics out of the movement, out of good mime acting. Very soon, clubs and discotheques all across Europe were interested in getting this man machine to entertain their dancing crowds. This was completely new territory. And we brought theater to the people instead the other way around. Infiltrating the clubs as dancing robots and in the middle of the night, we could reveal our mime show without masks on a stage right in front of hundreds and sometimes even thousands of people. You can't wish for a bigger audience. For some minutes these clubs became theaters. And once again, the people were loving it. Mission accomplished.
Around the World
I grew up in a more or less poor family. Although I had a wonderful childhood surrounded by cool friends and always greatly supported by my family, who gave me all the strength in the world to do what I love, traveling was a foreign word to me. We simply couldn't afford any bigger travels. Flying to other countries? No way! So I think you'll understand what it means to me, that my work as a mime artist made me step onto an airplane for the first time in my life in 2006, as a club in Switzerland was asking for the robots. Above the clouds, because somebody wants to pay me for doing something I love to do. Please, don't wake me up! The good thing: I'm still sleeping and my dream has brought me to Belgium, Holland, Poland, Austria, Luxemburg, Slovenia, Romania, United Kindom. It was showing me Italy, where a fantastic friend once just said: "You are my personal robots". And so he gave birth to the term "your personal robot", which I love to use. Furthermore, the dream surprised me with Russia and even gave me the chance to perform in Israel. And having Falafel for breakfast is a damn cool thing. Every single journey was a huge adventure. Every single time, I met fantastic people enlargening my personal horizon. (I would love to name every single one of you right now!) Every audience broke my heart showing me, that the non-verbal art of mime really has got no boundaries. So to all, who ever took the time to watch my show: THANK YOU!
Right here, right now
Hi! I'm Rocco, a movie addict, music lover, people observer, coffee drinker and gadget user...but most of all, I'm a mime artist and my story has just begun. I'm enjoying life in magnificent Berlin. I'm in love with a stunning woman, who steals my breath every day. I'm still amazed by my last big journey, which led me to Korea to perform at a wonderful mime festival. And I hope, this wasn't the last one. Constantly improving my creative output, I wish to always find an audience and share my passion in some minutes of non-verbal connection. And perhaps one day, I will perform right in front of you. Then please, don't forget to say Hi!
STORY
+49 178 137 6226
