Music and dance tell sixty years of Italian history with choreographic images of strong visual and emotional impact.
Six women enter a dance hall one after the other, each characterized as a type: the vamp, the romantic, the modest, the homely, the masculine, the inconsolable widow. The men with whom they scrutinize each other surreptitiously appear and, unsheathing the weapons of conquest, they choose each other, competing with the snob, the young man, the awkward one, the seducer, to the tune of “he’s the man for me” by Mina .
Between courtship and disdain, attraction and antipathy, the six couples smell each other, reject each other, embrace and mingle in a whirling circle of apparent disorder, where each couple changes and tells their story with mimicry, dancing different rhythms on the same notes, giving life in enjoyable and lively scenes, descriptive of the historical-social context and personal condition.
The rhythms change over the years, couples visibly replace their clothes, adapting to the fashion of the time, war looms demanding the offering of gold rings, some men wearing fascist uniforms leave for the front and some women sympathize with the regime, the other wives wear overalls to work in the factory. With the liberation, Italy imported the new American rhythms: tap, rock, twist. The world runs fast and the dancers continue to dance, while in the squares the feminist and pacifist movements propose a modern vision, the class struggle designs a new society and drugs claim victims. The economic boom of the Sixties is characterized by the longed-for sexual freedom and the bikini and miniskirts triumph. The music veers towards metallic and electronic sounds while cronyism and corruption grip the hedonistic and consumerist society.
In the intimacy of the conscience crossed by the flashes of light of some torch, the world wonders about the wars of religion and the catastrophic attack of 11 September, then bundles of clothes rain down from above, which everyone is wearing, finding themselves, when the lights are turned on, dressed as at the beginning of the dances in the dance hall. A dream? The desire to start again by learning from mistakes? A catharsis?
The show is emotionally touching, aesthetically refined, evocative and intense, poetic and synchronically perfect in its apparently random and disordered movements.
The dramaturgical fabric is punctuated by songs, music, dance and facial and postural mimicry to tell personal stories on the plot of History.
The Lescano Trio, Fred Bongusto, Domenico Modugno, Rita Pavone, Gianni Morandi, Adriano Celentano, Mina, Gino Paoli, Peppino di Capri, Franco Battiato, Ornella Vanoni, Luigi Tenco, Alan Sorrenti, Marlene Dietrich, Pink Floyd, Raffaella Carrà, the Rolling Stones, Gloria Gaynor, fascist anthems mark the passages of time with songs that belong to the collective memory.
The installation, derived from the format of Jean-Claude Penchenat which inspired Ettore Scola for the 1983 film ‘Ballando Ballando’, was adapted by Giancarlo Fares who signs the direction and dances together with Sara Valerio and ten other young actor-dancers in this long historical excursus from tango to rock and roll, from boogie woogie to chachacha, from disco music to twist in the explosive and highly calibrated choreographies of Ilaria Amaldi: Riccardo Averaimo, Alberta Cipriani, Manuel D’Amario, Vittoria Galli, Alice Iacono, Francesco Mastroianni, Matteo Milani, Pierfrancesco Perrucci, Maya Quattrini And Viviana Simone.
Colorful, refined, incandescent, it conveys emotions and hopes, loves and tragedies on the wave of a dynamic and pulsating energy between summer flirtations, wars, the desire for freedom, bombings, human tragedies linked by a subtle fil rouge that unravels all the events without resolution of continuity.
The harmony of a tireless cast animated by passion and professionalism touches the emotional chords and enchants the eyes with a choral representation calibrated in every detail.
The amazement of finding oneself again as at the beginning of the staging is underlined by Franco Battiato’s melancholic lines: “What’s left of you? ancient loves, days of celebration, tender ardors, just a sad yellowed photo between my fingers. (…) What remains of you, ancient loves, great secrets, complicit hearts, alone in the chest, a badly healed wound. What remains of you, bold words, chaste caresses, shy embers. Only an ash that no longer smokes but is consumed (…) Only one reason I still feel is a fugitive album from that time and I think of a place where I don’t know if I’ll return”.
Very warm applause from an audience all on their feet to dance with the cast in the audience.
Tania Turnaturi
