Technical Instructions on the Ars Amatoria
Monica Casadei’s indomitable enthusiasm is her defining trait: the choreographer of POèTANZ! is indeed an entrepreneur of herself and her company Artemis, an event organizer, and the artistic director of the International Festival Lugo Danza Corpi Multipli since 2002, the Parma-based Danza del III Millennio, and since 2005, the Corpi Scoperti season at Teatro H.O.P Altrove in Genoa. This enthusiasm fuels meetings, strategies, artistic passions, and the sudden shifts of this leading figure in Italian dance, who, with a degree in philosophy, traveled the world in the lush eighties, falling in love with Orissi dance, martial arts, butoh, and various contemporary techniques "à la française," before founding her "own" Artemis in Paris, where she often returns as if it were a second home.
Looking through a repertoire of about fifteen titles, we notice that it radiates that sunny enthusiasm, that always upbeat note that the beautiful and communicative figure of the choreographer inspires. From Senza Domicilio Fisso, which brought her to the attention of Italian and French critics in 1998, to Cuba 2006. La Rivoluzione Energetica, which will debut at the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara next November, it’s a succession of collaborations born from fateful encounters, for example with the musical group Nextime Ensemble by Danilo Grassi (for Angeli di Carne), with Mario Arcari for Invito a Cena con Eros which in 2001 brought her back to Rovereto after the debut of Antonio Ligabue (1999), another enthusiastic rendezvous, this time mediated, with a great naïve painter from her homeland (Casadei is from Ferrara). And then the invitations to Colombia and Aix-en-Provence, with Mayday Mayday.May we Help You? (2001), to Lille with Corpo d’Opera, born in collaboration with Andy from Bluvertigo, a love project (Kiss Time) and another inspired by the captivating charm of Piazzolla's tangos (Tocata Rea). In 2004, Ad Libitum, three solos for as many dancers, emerges as a dark note, the elaboration of a profound grief from which Monica redeems herself with great strength of spirit, resuming her youthful habits, such as traveling, this time beyond Europe. Brasil Pass (2005) is the transfiguration of a trip to South America, the sum of experiences also undertaken by her renewed group, the fleeting escape towards "other" cultures, reinforced by the arrival in Cuba with the group's residency at the Escuela Nacional de Arte de la Habana (2006).
In the meantime, the tireless choreographer accepts an invitation from poet Edoardo Sanguineti and creates a piece to the music of Andrea Liberovici – our very own POèTANZ! – for five dancers and a luminous installation by Marco Nereo Rotelli.
Co-produced by Oriente Occidente and already presented, in June, at the ParmaPoesiaFestival, POèTANZ! announces in its sparkling title-crasis intersections between poetry and dance. But the show offers more: historical images from films provided by the Cineteca di Bologna, costumes by Mariella Burani that enhance the sinuousness of the bodies, and especially the subtle tributes paid by Sanguineti to the French sociologist Marcel Mauss and his theories on the cultural nature of every gesture, which indeed divide the tripartite piece into explicit subtitles: all corresponding to precise techniques of the body. Marching, walking, kissing, that is: the reminiscences of the athleticism dear to totalitarian regimes, with Sanguineti's voice narrating irately and the seductions in high heels in a Tanztheater bistrot, mocking like the poet’s laughter. And finally, an incredibly long kiss – born from the notion that nothing is more technical than amorous approaches – a kiss undistracted by the rain of objects or the sonic virtuosity of Sanguineti, who here tears apart some of his poems and enriches them with appropriately translated verses by Catullus.
