Croatia – “Bolero Soirée” by MM Contemporary Dance Company
MM Contemporary Dance Company is guest of the Croatian National Theatre HNK Ivan pl. Zajc in Rijeka, historic theatre, opera and ballet house.
Thanks to the recent appointment of Paolo Mangiola as director of the Ballet, the HNK is launching a new dance programme that combines the classical repertoire with contemporary expressions, opening to new choreographic voices and artistic collaborations.
The invitation to Michele Merola's company is part of this new path. MMCDC will be on stage on February 8 (7:30 pm) with Bolero Soirée, a double bill composed of Elegia by Enrico Morelli and Bolero by Michele Merola.
Elegia by Enrico Morelli talks about our current era, a period that brings dizziness and bewilderment as never before, but also the renewed hope of a new beginning. A choral dance inhabited by individuals in search of an identity, of their own route. A tale of lost moments and relationships, coupled with the search, in one's memory, for images and landscapes that used to be familiar and comforting to us.
A praise of care, of paying attention to others, amplified by the words taken from Mariangela Gualtieri’s poems.
Michele Merola creates a new version of Ravel’s Bolero after a deep and long study on this obsessive and repetitive music. The choreographer’s inspiration focuses on the inexhaustible range of human relations, especially those related to couple relationship, in which we often note the mutual and irreconcilable distance between man and woman. Composer Stefano Corrias intervened on Ravel’s music creating his own musical score, freely based on the Bolero but perfectly integrated with it, fitting in three different moments of the choreography: three "fragments" that emphasize the more intimate -and sincere- moments of each of us, when we are far from the gaze of others and from the deafening noise of the world.
In Merola’s version, Bolero is reported as a non-story, kind of abstract "bitter fairy tale", an allegory of the pain of living and misunderstanding between humans.
Emilia-Romagna Region and the Italian Cultural Institute in Zagreb collaborated in the making of the event.