Putting the music of “Tosca” into dance (from the second and third act) means taking great risks because we know that story well. Hits are expected, especially if it is a ’65 recording with Maria Callas, Tito Gobbi, Carlo Bergonzi. And the sometimes dark voice of the soprano makes you shiver. But the Franco-Israeli choreographer Emanuel Gat wisely bypasses the obstacle because “Act II and III or the unexpected return of Haeven and Hearth” presented at the BolzanoDanza festival goes in a completely different direction. It puts twelve naked dancers struggling with dance and nothing else in a bare scene. A dance that certainly follows the musical thread in a symbiosis that continues even when the performers are dressed in the second part. And nudity is not an easy ploy but a way to get away from the known, to take the viewer elsewhere. Emanuel Gat with a new job will then be in Torinodanza.
Bolzanodanza paid a very just homage to Susanna Egri, the dean choreographer of Italian dance by re-proposing her “Jeux”. The lady, full of charm and determination despite her many springs, has taken up her version (1979) of the ballet by Nijinsky and Debussy (born in 1913). As in the original, a tennis ball bursts into the scene at the beginning (a garden at dusk), followed by two tennis players and a boy who entertain loving even if chaste relationships. And at the end another ball bursts into the scene: another trio ready to flirt? Egri knows how to unfold a neoclassical style that belongs only to her. The first interview with the choreographer comes to mind. When asked about this point she replied: “I don’t do classical or contemporary. I do Egri ”.
If you think that the contemporary can also be done on the roller skates “Cabraquimera” of the Portuguese Catarina Miranda is for you. Everything is in dim light. Only the rollers of the skates and the visors of the dancers are phosphorescent. Nice effect even if a little more.
Michele Di Stefano with “maqam” offers us an orient through seven dancers and two musicians. The term in Arabic has many meanings, but here it stands above all for improvisation. The one that Amir Elsaffar unfolds while Lorenzo Bianchi Hoesch at the console elaborates electronic music. Musicians on the left and dancers on the right in a play of lights that alternate between red and dark.
Eric Gauthier, Canadian choreographer, but director of the Gauthier Dance in Stuttgart calls on prestigious names to collaborate. For example, the Israeli Ohad Naharin to whom he asked to reassemble “Kamuyot” presented not in the theater, but in a space of the Bolzano Fair. Audience on all four sides invited at times to dance with the dancers, an absolutely original style that perhaps only those of Batsheva (Naharin’s company) can fully advance. But Gauthier’s young people (in groups or in strong solos) have grit and go wild on a klezmer music (the Jewish music of Eastern Europe) that draws the audience. Just as they conquered the audience with the ending “Seven Deadly Sins”. The seven deadly sins Gauthier has entrusted to seven famous choreographers: among others Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Sharon Eyal, Hofesh Shechter, Sasha Waltz.
Sergio Trombetta