Aterballetto. - Teatro Valli, Reggio Emilia, Italy - dance reviews

Dance Magazine, April, 1998 by Elisa Buccella

TEATRO VALLI, REGGIO EMILIA, ITALY JANUARY 7-9, 1998 REVIEWED BY MARIA ELISA BUCCELLA

Italy's celebrations of the bicentennial of the Tricolor, the national flog, concluded with Aterballetto's new production, Comoedia. The production is the grand debut of a new direction for the company, now under the artistic leadership of Mauro Bigonzetti after many years under the stewardship of Amedeo Amodio.

Comoedio is loosely inspired by medieval poet Dante Alighieri's work of the same name, known in English as The Divine Comedy. By tradition, Dante is considered the inventor of the Italian language, and he mentions three colors in his poem--red, green, and white--which are the colors of the Italian flag. Comoedia is, in fact, the first part of a triptych based on Dante's poem that Bigonzetti will continue to work on until 2000. Following "Inferno," the current section, will be "Purgatory" and "Paradise."

Without falling into the trap of adhering strictly to the plot of Dante's narrative, Bigonzetti's work is fluid, rich in atmosphere and suggestion, evocative without being emphatic. Given the theme, it was certainly not easy to find the proper balance, to resist the temptation to present either a very dense choreographic treatment or an exaggerated minimalism. However, he has succeeded in finding a sort of earthly abstraction which is particularly congenial.

The idea of a vast abyss gaping to the center of the Earth, as Dante describes in "Inferno," is beautifully realized through the highly effective scenographic solutions created by Claudio Parmiggiani. In the three settings into which the performance is divided, gray and white predominate: Gray, in all of its various tones, from the lightest to the darkest, and white, in the classically inspired statues that loom over the scenes, miraculously poised on a sloping partition. Parmiggiani sculpted the statues, which bring to mind the many historical figures that populate Dante's "Inferno." The final scene opens onto an immense square formed by hundreds of candies, which are magically extinguished one after the other, thus closing the ballet's epilogue.

Carlo Cerri's lighting is refined, and without it perhaps a good portion of the production's visual magic would be lost. Lucia Socci's costumes are extremely simple, a series of white bonds that form body stockings wrapped around the dancers. The music, composed for the occasion by Bruno Moretti and performed live by Emilia Romagna's Arturo Toscanini Symphony Orchestra, is a potpourri of musical genres at odds with the developments onstage, finding their true unison only in the finale.

All of the dancers are first-rate, with Orazio Caiti, Monica Garcia y Vicente, and Fabio Grassi particularly notable. With Bigonzetti, a former soloist with the troupe who began his choreographic career there, Aterballetto seems to have regained its former spirit. The corps, pared down to fourteen members, half of whom are new, is of a very high quality. In the tradition of the company, all the dancers have solid academic training as well as the technical and interpretive capacity that enables them to respond to a wide variety of stylistic demands.