Ammutinamenti, the urban dance and author festival brings out various trends in
the recent 2019 instalments. For more than 21 years, the Cantieri di Ravenna
association, guided by Selina Bassini and Monica Francia, has been presenting new
and selected proposals, Ammutinamenti’s first instalment is the female duet. There are many, all choreographed by the performers themselves and by Adriano Bolognino
choreographer. The duets are based on the same idea, the “sisterhood”, the female
“twinning”, except Storie brevi-nulla di troppo intimo, where some elements of
struggle emerge.
A much stronger and more incisive instalment is the male duo about “love and
abandonment” between two men, Lost in this (un)stable life, by and performed by
Nicolas Grimaldi Capitello together with Francesco Russo.
The issue of gender and the question of conventional identities, much internalised
as to filter “naturally” from the unconscious, are far from the real “diverse” vision,
as you would eventually expect in the creations of the new generations.
The second line of work that emerges belongs to the “Prove d’autore XL”, which
brings together accredited names of the last generation of choreographic-
performative and established dance companies, such as professional dancers
accustomed to “danza danzata”, frontal, theatrical, and spectacular.
For this occasion, Marco D’Agostin worked with four interpreters of the Balletto di
Roma for the work ‘Best Seller’; Francesca Foscarini with six dancers from the Nuovo
Balletto di Toscana in the work ‘Greta on the Beach’, and Moreno Solinas & Igor
Urzelai with five dancers from MM Contemporary Dance Company in the work
‘Beats’.
A common point is the use of ballet and dance codes as a citation inside a fabric of
gestures and moves taken from other areas. Performers have it in their bodies and
here and there the code emerges, with the music by Philip Glass (Grid and
Prophecies) and by the voice of Greta Thunberg, the famous young Swedish activist
fighting to save the Earth, by Foscarini. In the obsessiveness of the rhythmic beat
and disco gesture by Moreno Igor; in the repeating singing and dancing, like in a
little mocking adolescent game, the sequence of four cygnets in Lago by D’Agostin.
The same citation mode had been seen in “Prova d’Autore XL”, 2018 first edition, in
the successful quartet Intro by Andrea Costanzo Martini, created with impetus and
humour the beautiful Israeli-contemporary mould, for the Belletto di Roma.
A “not a trend” outside the chorus comes as a surprise with DO YOU WANNA JUDGE
ME by Maria Vittoria Feltre & Luca Zanni, presented as a study on the frames of the
Michelangiolesco Giudizio Universale. This is of little importance since the creators
used this background as a stimulus. What you see is a clever pure work in the way of
Merce Cunningham, on signs, space, direction, trajectories, and also with the screen on which the avatars of the choreographers-interpreters and the third performer,
Nicola Simone Cisternino, multiply and divide articulating and interesting
choreographic rhythms.
