Balletto di Roma goes contemporary with PARADOX
Paradox is a new production by Balletto di Roma, premiered for the first time at Belgrade Dance Festival on april 7th . This is the first production of the Company since the new designate artistic director Roberto Casarotto, and it has been premiered for Italy in Padua on late april 2016
The work is presented as a triptyque create by 2 chroreographers : israeli Itamar Serussi Sahar, yet dancer in Batsheva Dance Company and choreographer for Scapino Ballet and Italian Paolo Mangiola, from Royal Ballet and WayneMcGregor|Random Dance and now at Balletto di Roma.
Paradox is a pièce inspired by gender identity
I unfortunately wasn’t able to see the first act (Shyco) staged by itamar Serussi Sahar but I really enjoyd the other 2 acts, the second (Fem) created by Magiola and the last one (Tefer) again by Sahar.
Two really different creations where the common aesthetic point is the simplicity and bareness of the stage design, where the lights and backlights shape and enhance the movements and the bodies. In the second act “Fem” there is a progression and a strong vibration of the music and the 4 ballerinas have a different choreography for each one that sometimes are connected together. The impression is that the joint between two dancers is a kind of metaphore of the encountering with oneself and the other part of oneself.
When I usually meet corheographers, independently where they are from , they almost always tell me that the most important thing for them is that the audience can see just persons that are dancing. So, In my opinion, since the main theme of the tripthyque is gender, the question is: wich gender we are talking about when we think of people? And what gender when people are dancing? Talking with Paolo Mangiola he explained me that the touch of the ballerinas play on stage among them is a touch of knowledge, supporting , something gentle, kind and welcoming . lights are in the front side and in the backlight as well and they create a contrast. The whole act is very dynamic but really poetic.
The last act is named “Tefer” . A man in backlight is moving in contraction, extension and bending . Other dancers get on the stage and they assemble in couples comparing themselves like if they were before mirrors. Al the choreography become a kind of a dialogue among many people that express the same thing. Someone “says” something different but there is anyway a “trend of the group” to unify the message. There are noises of swords and blades and the choreography is the same for all the dancers and has some modular structure that could convey a kind of “cold” aspect to a piece but the accent that is given to some gestures , like hands on the hips for example, can take back to the dances of folk origins. Itamar Serussi adds some full colored magenta light that can remind some videos of electronic music where depersonalized bodies are depicted ( first thing I thought when I saw it was: kraftwerk). These bodies don’t forget to be humans and that they have something that distinguish them one from the other.
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Elena De Dominicis – 3 maggio 2016