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Sylphidarium
Maria Taglioni on the ground
ph: Camilla Caselli
ph: Giuseppe Distefano
ph: Camilla Caselli
ph: Camilla Caselli
direction, choreography:
Francesca Pennini
original music and live electronics:
Francesco Antonioni
dramaturgy:
Angelo Pedroni
Francesca Pennini
action and creation:
Simone Arganini
Margherita Elliot
Carolina Fanti
Carmine Parise
Angelo Pedroni
Francesca Pennini
Stefano Sardi
Vilma Trevisan
violin:
Marlène Prodigo
percussions:
Riccardo Guidarini
light design and technical direction:
Fabio Sajiz
video:
Marco Morandi
costume designer:
Francesca Pennini
tailors:
Edoardo Morandi
Interno Danza Ferrara
co-production:
CollettivO CineticO
Théatre de Liège
Torinodanza Festival
Festival MITO
CANGO, Cantieri Goldonetta Firenze
in collaboration with:
Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione
Fondazione Teatro Comunale di Ferrara
L’Arboreto - Teatro Dimora di Mondaino
with the contribution of:
ResiDance XL - Action of the Network Anticorpi XL coordinated by Arboreto - Teatro Dimora di Mondaino
piece for theatrical stages
year 2016
duration: 90 minutes
UBU award 2017 for Best Dance Piece
UBU nomination 2017 for Best Original Music Score
In a white limbo.
Like a Fashion Show.
Like a ballet.
Like a collection of insects.
Romanticism that goes beyond the ‘contemporary’ and its conceptualisms, simultaneously cooled and made incandescent by a look of lacerating and distant citation, dedication and oxymoron.
A journey through the body that exposes itself in the most extreme, aseptic and ascetic nudity, carrier of wonderful clothes in which to hide and celebrate its darkness, exalting and projecting itself in a mythological
horizon.
Sylphidarium evokes the choreography that was the origin of the romantic ballet, La Sylphide, featuring Maria Taglioni in 1832, the affirming act of the pointe shoes and the tutu. It evolves in Les Sylphides, abstract evocation of its moon-like fumisterie of 1909, mutating now towards entomology with the sylphs, beetles that feed on carrion and are used by scientists to trace the time of death of a body.
An autopsy of classical ballet, transformed and hybridized by gymnastics, acrobatics and bodybuilding, presenting an aerobic finale, modeled on Jane Fonda’s keep-fit videos, with spatial silver outfits, in the midst of a white scene that wants to repeat the dazzling effect of twirling tutus.
The fantasy connects with the ironic dismantling of balletic scenarios, of the story of Adolphe Nourrit, as the upward leaps fight against the disarticulation of the erect posture or freeze in tableaux that seem to stop time in a hybrid frame between the past, today and the future.
A glowing work, supported by the highly mobile music composed by Francesco Antonioni and the iridescent, real, slightly crepuscular and imaginative lighting by Fabio Sajiz.
A reflection on the forms of tradition in order to draw a mutant body, surpassing stereotypes typical of the "contemporary" genre, to venture into uncharted territories that go beyond the etiquette of predefined shapes and also that of contamination, in search of its generative urgency for expression.
“With inventive genius, the choreographer from Ferrara starts the show with an extravagant and colorful catwalk, [...] The liberated body explodes in a triumph of movement that seems to have no end, bringing to the close a show full of intelligent humour, rigorous dramatic and aesthetic language, revealing Francesca Pennini’s new compositional maturity.”
[ G. Distefano - Artribune ]
“[...] the adrenalinic result that bursts forth from CollettivO CineticO’s latest work, lead by the constantly talented Francesca Pennini. The mechanisms and the aesthetics of the scenes are an infinite collection of Tartan, candid costumes, balaclavas, zoomorphic extremes opposed to the myth of the ballet pointe shoe, nude sequences, cannibalism that decline the liquid pulsations of lightness. In short, really a vibrant map that makes a clean sweep of the sublime.”
[ R. Di Gianmarco - La Repubblica ]
“On stage there is no respite: dynamic power, physical presence and strength, contagious and pulsating
vehemence, sensuality applied with style to a sophisticated technique for dancers. An amazing Francesca Pennini conquers audiences with a flawless performance, choreography, technical skills and the ability to create interchangeable energy flows between spectators and what happens on stage. Sylphidarium is a show that looks at the future of dance.”
[ L. Morisco - LSD Magazine ]
“The creative genius of Francesca Pennini finds the solution: modernizing the image of the ballet dancer, the sylph ‘par excellence’. [...] The Sylphs then become human beings in all respects, naked in their flesh and instincts, gasping for Love without discrimination, substantiated by the dance to the last breath. Just like the one that, in the dark, ends the show "
[ M. Argentina - Il Giornale della Danza ]
“Moving between tradition and transgression, CollettivO CineticO broadens the horizons of contemporary dance by designing new possible scenarios through a choreography that combines the entomologist’s scientific accuracy with the artist's madness.”
[ S. Curati - Paper Street ]
“A glowing work, an evocation of human suffering and the exaltation of the body. An open-eyed dream of a tale told by the kids of today, grownup, disenchanted, but still eager to set the breath of fantasy into motion.”
[ M. Marino - Il Corriere di Bologna ]
“Instead of returning to tell the updated story, Pennini dissects the parts with the attention of an entomologist; she deconstructs and then reassembles them using a conceptual process, proposing the individual elements in a package full of humour. Not to mention the skill of the eight dancers including Pennini.”
[ Sergio Trombetta - La Stampa ]
VIDEO TRAILER
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