A true promise. Manuela Rastaldi, the young Italian choreographer working in Belgium is proving to be an inexhaustible source of surprises: her works show an interesting research path on the theme of the presence-absence of the body on stage that moves from pure dance and contact-improvisation to border on visual art, installation and performance. She moved from Italy to Brussels in 1995 to specialise at Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's P.A.R.T.S., Rastaldi subsequently danced with Michelle-Anne De Mey and in Thierry De Mey's short film 21 études à danser before embarking on her own path
as an author. The first solo she choreographed, Ennesima - the name later also given to her company -, in 1998, already contained some of the main themes of what gradually took shape as a very personal style characterised by an analysis of the limits of the body, scrupulous attention to visual aspects, compositional research based on improvisation, and the choice of an accurate sound setting for the works, often entrusted to famous composers such as Thierry De Mey and Charo Calvo. Thus the works realised so far: the aforementioned Ennesima, the female trio Tra (2000), the series of performances created since 2001 entitled Stanze and Loom, a work from 2003 that Oriente Occidente is hosting in its Italian premiere. A creation for four performers, Loom brings to completion that process of research on the theme of the presence-absence of the body on stage characteristic of the author and develops it with mature organicity. From simple shadow, silhouette, apparition, the body acquires, in the course of the work, concreteness to the point of occupying the entire stage.
In the first part, three large panels made of elastic material and supported by metal structures conceal three silhouettes of women, three traces of bodies that appear and disappear like stroboscopic photographic shots.
Gentle touches of the canvas alternate with jumps, with the violent appearance of hands between the fabric, with the acquisition of obsolete poses barely glimpsed by the spectator. All these movements constitute a fascinating play of light and shadow and create an astonishing soundtrack amplified live on the matrix devised by Charo Calvo (a former Vandekeybus performer who later switched to electro-acoustic composition, a former collaborator of Jan Fabre, Olga Mesa and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui) and Thierry De Mey. A sort of X-ray of the human body, intangible and caged.
Then, suddenly, the shadowy condition is overcome by a dancer who acquires three-dimensionality. Her appearance, however, is linked to a slow awareness of the material, embodied by the assumption of uncomfortable postures held for a prolonged period of time... Behind her, two other flesh-and-blood bodies appear as larvae in the process of definition. Little by little the transformation process takes place and in the second part the bodies show themselves in their concreteness, 'inhabiting' the space like moving sculptures. A series of extremely dynamic and intense duets, solos, quartets
extremely dynamic and intense that affirm a new status of the body, material, concrete. But everything is destined to disappear, to shrink.
