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Open Door

Artificio

luce, rumore, fumo

from an idea by Marco Laudani | choreographed and directed by: Marco Laudani | text: Noemi Privitera | sound project: Michele Piccolo, Massimo Lievore | other music: Sergei Prokofiev | dancers: Ismaele Buonvenga, Paola Tosto | choreography assistant: Rachele Pascale | acting coach: Sergio Campisi | production: ocram dance movement in collaboration with Scenario Pubblico/Compagnia Zappalà Danza Centro Di Rilevante Interesse Nazionale

Like a pyrotechnic game that enchants and leaves one open-mouthed, life lasts the time of a resounding explosion, then finishes. What remains, at the end of the exhilarating spectacle, is the feeling that it has lasted too little, amazement and a sweet bitter melancholy, the desire to start again, the fear that it is already too late. Through the metaphor of fireworks, it is possible to experience the three most significant phases of human existence and the feelings that predominate over each of them.

Childhood, in fact, is characterised by the taste of expectation that precedes the event, a pleasure that has yet to exist, but is already more intense than the pleasure itself that is to come. The life of a child follows the logic of the well-known admonition ‘hic et nunc’, but in a far more naive and, perhaps, more genuine sense. Children seize the moment in its essence, do not worry about the consequences of their actions, nor do they think long and hard before making a choice. This recklessness of theirs, filled with immaturity, is perhaps what Horace aspires to, trying to live in the ‘here and now’ despite adulthood.

But childhood cannot be replicated even by the best poet, and with it also becomes unobtainable the enjoyment that lies in preparation.

The spark that lights the fire generates an irreversible explosion and, in an instant, one is an adult.
The pleasure no longer resides in the anticipation of the fires, but is the fire itself.
Bright, deafening and bursting, it is the climax of pyrotechnics and human life, the climax of the spectacle.

During early adulthood everything revolves around love – love for oneself, love for another person, love for a project, love for an animal and so on – and love is pleasure itself. The pursuit of love is exciting, the loss of it exhausting, but it is in the love that is lived and consumed that human enjoyment dwells, the rest is a side dish that enriches or impoverishes. However, moderate love is a prerogative of wise people, and wisdom is a goal that affects another stage of life, the third.

A young adult loves much, and many times, and the feeling generates light and noise, but “violent joys have violent finishes. They die in their triumph, like gunpowder and fire that are consumed in the first kiss’. If Romeo and Juliet had been
sixty-five or so, they might have loved in silence and moderation, but they would have remained alive at least finally.

Life wears out slowly in old age, even the body slows its march towards a goal that, at the end of the day, belongs to everyone and that everyone would like to avoid, except the stoics.

The last shot in the sky marks the finish of the games and the beginning of a hazy darkness that lives on the reflected light of a life already lived.