choreography and direction  Roberto Zappalà
original music (live played) Laura Inserra
performer and collaboration  Michal Mualem
text Nello calabrò
video compositing Federico Baronello /MEDIATANK

photos Gianmaria Musarra

a coproduction by compagnia zappalà danza – Scenario Pubblico – uva grapes Catania contemporary dance festival
première 18/19/25/26 august 2008 uva grapes Catania contemporary dance festival

A work part of the project entitled Instruments, which focuses on researching movement in relation to the use of particular musical instruments; after the ‘marranzano’ (Jew’s harp), the newly conceived Swiss instrument called ‘hang’ will be explored. Instrument 2 <la sofferenza del corpo> (body pain), a solo conceived by Roberto Zappalà with dancer and choreographer Michal Mualem, is part of the ‘re-mapping Sicily’ project, a personal re-reading of Sicily through Zappalà’s unique artistic craft. This choreography is a first step towards the 2009 creation of ‘A. semu tutti devoti tutti’, a work that takes Saint Agatha, patron saint of Catania, as the starting point to talk about popular religious belief or what it means to be a Sicilian.

‘After Instrument 1 in which the marranzano (Jew’s harp) was played to produce non-folk sounds to reveal an equally non-folk image of Sicily, the contrasts and oppositions are yet again at the very centre of Instrument 2, second stage of the ‘re-mapping Siciliy’ project. This time it is the contrast/opposition between the celestial sound of the Swiss music instrument ‘hang’, and the dancing body of Michal Mualem. By evoking the legend of Saint Agatha – young girl/woman, martyr/saint – the dance focuses on the disarticulation and pain of the broken, martyred but yet always evoked female body. A body that symbolises other and further pains, in which the spasms may equally be pleas, since the boundaries between prayer and blasphemy, plea and refusal may sometimes vanish when submitted to extreme pain’. Nello Calabrò