Aterballetto’s dancers (and culture) do not stop
1 meter CLOSER is a long-distance collective work, a ‘pilot project’ for dance proposed by Aterballetto – Fondazione Nazionale della Danza to face this difficult worldwide moment and give a concrete answer to the possibility to create keeping a safe distance and using the new technologies.
“The present time asks us to make new models, to continue in pursuing an exigent aesthetics but to adapt our creativity to the spaces in which we can dance and to the available channels of fruition", says Gigi Cristoforetti, director of Fondazione Nazionale della Danza, and concept of the project.
The video-creation has been realized in quarantine between March 24th and April 8th: choreographer Diego Tortelli from Milan, videomaker Valeria Civardi from Turin, the fifteen dancers from their homes, almost all in Reggio Emilia, and Federico Bigonzetti, author of the original music, from London. The choreographies are performed in yards, houses, stairwells, the perfection of the theatre hall is given up, surfaces are limited, clothes are chosen at random from the wardrobe.
“The title clearly refers to the safety distance we have to keep,” explains Diego Tortelli “but which guarantees us a closeness in a collective goal, a strong closeness in our desire to feel joined in overcoming and fighting an invisible enemy. Nothing better than the body of the dancers locked in their homes can tell us what we are living and how this distance can turn into a bridge that joins us. 1 meter CLOSER is a virtual embrace. An embrace of a relationship at a distance, but with a global force. The strength of the body of the dance in captivity that is presented to its audience through the screen”.
A first video-message realized by Aterballetto in the beginning of the emergency has already conquered Italian national news and is now spreading on the web. It has also been included in #weareItaly, the campaign of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affair promoting Italy worldwide in the time of Corona virus.
Now, RAI 5 broadcasts the premiere of 1 meter CLOSER on the occasion of the International Dance Day on April 29th at 08:55 p.m., replay at 24:00 pm.
An interview to Cristoforetti, still on RAI 5, on April 24th, at 11:00 p.m., tells this new creative experience.