Bigonzetti on the rise - Italian choreographer mauro Bigonzetti

Dance Magazine, May, 1995 by Silvia Poletti

ROME--Italian choreographer Mauro Bigonzetti's dance is the perfect translation of his personality: an unremitting explosion of stamina. It appears powerful, energetic, and bold, then suddenly turns intimate and lyrical. His dances offer a singular balance between evident strength and secret tenderness, which attracts an audience's attention and holds it tight.

These and other qualities are making Bigonzetti the golden boy of Italian ballet. On May 6, Teatro Valli in Reggio Emilia will stage an entire evening of his work. The program will include Turnpike (a 1991 commission for Balletto di Toscana that evokes the frantic movement on America's superhighways); a quartet inspired by Francis Bacon's paintings, and set to Franz Schubert's Death and the Maiden; and another creation for the dancers of Balletto di Toscana.

Unlike most other Italian dancemakers of his generation, Bigonzetti was first of all a classical dancer; and he has a deep knowledge of balletic language, which he articulates with originality and creativity.

Trained at the Rome Opera Ballet School and then a soloist with that company, he seemed destined for a career as a demi-caractere dancer when he chose to leave the quiet life of the opera house in favor of Aterballetto. He experienced Aterballetto's "artistic revolution'" which, during the 1980s, was supposed to establish a new way to promote dance in Italy. The troupe's repertoire included works by such masters as Balanchine, Tudor, and Massine, as well as commissions from the likes of Alvin Ailey and Kenneth MacMillan, so Bigonzetti attained a maturity that brought him to the attention of critics. The Italian magazine Danza & Danza named him best cancer of 1986.

Bigonzetti's biggest eye-opener, however, came when William Forsythe created StepText for Aterballetto. Observing at firsthand how Forsythe developed his choreography permitted Bigonzetti to absorb Forsythe's aesthetics and to conceive of a similar way of making dances.

Beginning with his piece Sei in Movimento, his language has been bold and daring, exhibiting speedy enchainements and virtuosic balances similar to his mentor's. Bigonzetti also reveals, however, a peculiar sensibility for music as emotional inspiration. The overwhelming interplay of the two harpsichords in J. S. Bach's second concerto, for example, provides excellent support for the whirling arms and legs of Turnpike.

Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, with its monumental architecture of pure sound, was mirrored in the abstract, pure neoclassicism of Bigonzetti's Pitture per Archi (Paintings for Strings), a 1992 commission for the Second String Festival in Reggio Emilia.

Having the opportunity to work with such professional companies as Aterballetto and Balletto di Toscana from the beginning, and showing at once a clever talent for inventing solid choreographic structures, Bigonzetti immediately aroused the interest of the Italian dance world.

In 1993 La Scala Ballet invited him to create a new piece for the Italian Choreographers' Evening that it had been organizing for two years. Again Danza & Danza awarded him a prize--this time as Best Young Italian Choreographer.

That same year the international dance festival Torino Danza produced his first evening-length ballet, for Balletto di Toscana: Mediterranea. A look at Latin and African cultures, Mediterranea is not a predictable mix of folk-dance styles; rather its abstract choreography has all the fire and strength of those who live on "our sea." A hit with the public, Mediterranea was also acclaimed by critics for its power, and it strengthened Bigonzetti's reputation.

The most impressive confirmation of the thirty-four-year-old choreographer's talent, however, was English National Ballet's invitation to create a new work for their 1994 spring season. Bigonzetti's international debut with X.N.Tricities was absolutely successful with the British public and critics.

Yet this was just the first step in Bigonzetti's international progress. In April ENB was scheduled to offer another premiere by him. And Nanette Glushak has invited him to create a new work for Ballet du Theatre Capitole of Toulouse, France, in 1996.