Over the Rainbow

Matteo Levaggi, a choreographer focused on the present, whose work is influenced by classical tradition, embellished by contorted arm movements and lacey patterns, has long had a privileged relationship with the visuals arts  for his works. He has collaborated for many years with Corpicrudi since he appeared at the Balletto di Torino as leading choreographer. This then resulted in the successful Primo Toccare trilogy, after which he carried on as a freelancer with the show Death Speaks for the Museo MADRE in Naples.

Now the choreographer is fascinated by the multi-semiotic artist Umberto Chiodi: a sharing of intent that has led them to create the site-specific Over the Rainbow for Oriente Occidente and MART. Here Chiodi’s talk on hybridization and assemblage of materials leads to contamination with another expressive language: dance. So, the choreographer now has to reconsider his stylistic code by taking his artistic stratifications back to zero in order to start a new relationship with the object of his creativity- 

Here, the object in question is represented by four brightly-coloured Luminous assemblies positioned in the room on the second floor of the Mart where the Wall drawing by Sol Lewitt stands out on the wall, one of the minimalist masterpieces of the American artist. This isn’t a random location given Lewitt's privileged relationship with the emerging postmodern dance in the New York of the 1970s and, in particular, with Lucinda Childs. In contrast with the black and white of Lewitt's work, the Assemblies by Chiodi are very colorful: abstract signs made from joined up fragments of consumer objects - trophies, toys, chandeliers - which take on the ambiguous and pseudo-functional shape of multi-coloured lamps. These lights, that are "foreign bodies" to the flesh and bones body of the dancer, are called by the artist 'prepared' hula hoops, citing John Cage's prepared piano. Like that piano, whose sound was modified by objects inserted between the strings, the hula hoop Assemblies house in their cavity other objects too, such as bells and sand, so that they become musical instruments. A challenge to the finiteness of the dancers' bodies, who will have a prosthesis to deal with during this time of social distancing and a challenge, too, to the choreographic composition which is forced to accommodate these objects.