rereading of the Sfocatura dei Corpi 2006 Project

première 5 & 6 August Orizzonti Festival, Chiusi

direction, choreography, lights and stage costumes Roberto Zappalà
dance Fernando Roldan Ferrer, Valeria Zampardi
music Pink Floyd, Elvis Presley, Luigi Tenco, José Altafini, Mirageman, John Cage, Sergei Prokofiev
text Nello Calabrò
technical direction Sammy Torrisi

To mark the quarter of a century and long years of intense production, Roberto Zappalà recently announced his new project, Antologia. Antologia harks back to some of Zappalà’s most fascinating works that left a mark on his choreographical ensemble. The new project not only aims to preserve and revisit these works, it wishes to innovate and yield new perspectives by pursuing new forms of contact: the mere succession of dancers lends new mobility to the choreographer’s work and reveals new forms of creativity. It leads to a reflection of the past but also and inevitably a reflexion about the future.

Blurred bodies was the title Roberto Zappalà gave his 2006, Romeo and Juliet production. It now forms the first scene in Zappalà’s Antologia.

Antologia revisits but also innovates aspects of the former production. Romeo and Juliet 1.1

What makes us blurry, when we feel blurry? Technically speaking (in optics, photography, cinema), blurriness is all a matter of distance. It is the focal length, or distance from the centre of the lens to the focal point, or object of interest. If this distance is inferior or superior to a given point, the object will become blurry.

Returning to the two lovers in Verona, we feel blurry when we perceive that the distance between us and the world, us and the loved one isn’t right; when the distance separating us from our beloved is conditioned by us being in the world; when we are, feel or believe we are, too close or too far, we become Romeo and Juliet.

The choreographer changes his focus in 1.1, turning it away from the two lovers together onto them individually, as they live with a deep sense of unease within society. The famous couple’s plight culminates in love sublimed through death (or the opposite). It offers a reflexion and at the same time the possibility of a rebellion at a historical moment in time (the present) where the impulse of death is sublimed in and of itself, where passion and respect are healthy tributes to life.

It innovates Romeo and Juliet, it no longer discusses love but becomes a loving ode to life.

With thanks to Simone Viola for her ballroom work and the scholar Stefano Tomassini for having helped in the performance’s production and re-interpretation.

A production by Scenario Pubblico/Compagnia Zappalà Danza – Centro di Produzione della Danza

in coproduction with Orizzonti Festival. Fondazione

in collaboration with “Le Mouvement Mons” Festival (Belgio)

première 5/6 August 2016 Orizzonti Festival, Chiusi (I)

with the support of

Ministero dei Beni e delle Attività Culturali and Regione Siciliana Ass.to del Turismo, Sport e Spettacolo