France – "Fisica dell’aspra comunione" by Claudia Castellucci
Le Manège Maubeuge - Scène Nationale transfrontalière and Le Phénix - Scène Nationale Valenciennes host the performance Fisica dell’aspra comunione, dance by Claudia Castellucci’s Compagnia Mòra, that is presented as part of the series “Cabaret de Curiosités”.
It is the work performed in Venice on the occasion of the awarding of the Silver Lion 2020 to Claudia Castellucci. In the statement, director of the 14th International Festival of Contemporary Dance Marie Chouinard defined the dramaturg, choreographer and teacher from Cesena, co-founder of the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, «sober, serious, minimalist, and demanding choreographer, who works with sacrality at her art».
The dance passes through a series of movements deduced from Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux, composed for piano between 1956 and 1958, following a long period of observation and transcription of birdsong.
“The vocal production of birds creates rhythms that lead to the contemplative and non-mensural interpretation of this dance”, Castellucci writes in her notes. “It is not possible to rely on a schematic memory, because the rhythms are unpredictable. And yet, the freedom of birdsong can be taken as a model and ‘learned’, provided that one experiences this dance with a sense of remaining in the ‘now’, with no regard to measure, attentive to rhythm alone. (…) What we intend to learn from birds is their inclination towards events that always take place in the present, with no projections aimed towards future targets, with a full consummation in the ‘now’ “.
The dancers consume the dance to the music performed live by pianist Matteo Ramon Arevalos, creating a perfect correspondence between sound and movement, and the spectators too can only rely to the ‘here and now’ and witness an act of creation in progress.
Fisica dell’aspra comunione is on stage on March 15 (8 pm) at the Théâtre Léo Ferré in Aulnoye-Aymeries.
Le Manège Maubeuge - Scène Nationale transfrontalière