SITE-SPECIFIC CREATION
PROJECT RIC.CI - RECONSTRUCTION ITALIAN CONTEMPORARY CHOREOGRAPHY 1980s-1990s
CO-PRODUCED BY ORIENTE OCCIDENTE AND MART
The RIC.CI project – Reconstruction Italian Contemporary Choreography 1980s-1990s, conceived eight years ago by dance critic and scholar Marinella Guatterini, continues its journey of rewriting the choreographies that marked the birth and development of contemporary dance in Italy. Following collaborations with Alessandro Certini/Virgilio Sieni, Enzo Cosimi, Fabrizio Monteverde, Michele Abbondanza/Antonella Bertoni, Valeria Magli, Michele Di Stefano, Silvana Barbarini, and Mario Martone, Erodiade - Fame di Vento by Julie Ann Anzilotti has been added.
Created by the choreographer in collaboration with artist Alighiero Boetti, who worked with her for eight months and also suggested the subtitle of the piece (and then passed away prematurely the following year, in 1994), Erodiade - Fame di Vento is inspired by the unfinished poem Hérodiade by Stéphane Mallarmé, of which only three fragments and a series of notes remain. Here, Julie Ann Anzilotti relies on the logic of movement, structured between technique and expression, to bring to the stage the figure of Salomé (using her mother's name, Herodias, as in Mallarmé), portrayed in her immense solitude and bitterness.
Erodiade, beautiful and sensual, desires and obtains everything, but unease continues to consume her: she is increasingly alone, increasingly desperate in her search for the absolute. Only in the end will she find her ‘benevolent spirit,’ her guardian angel who introduces her to a lighter, more paradisiacal world. Alongside her are four other dancers in the roles of the Nurse, the Spirit of Good, the Evil Spirit, and the Angel, along with a male dancer embodying John the Baptist, whose decapitation Erodiade will request.
The set designed by Boetti lends the performance an essential quality punctuated by archaic signs: a light backdrop dominated by a red circle, a red strip crossing the stage, a clear reference to blood and passion. It is a composition on the eternal opposition between Good and Evil, built on the symbiosis of movement, visual elements, and words (with the voice of Gabriella Bartolomei distilling the verses of the symbolist poet).
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