Sylphidarium

Ballet for amplified violin, drums and electronics (2016) 

instrumentation

Violin (amplified), Drum Set, Fixed-media electronics

commission

MiTo Settembre Musica 2016

duration

90 min.

notes

Choreography by Francesca Pennini & Collettivo Cinetico
Awarded the UBU Prize 2017 as best dance show
Francesco Antonioni nominated for Best original music.

presentation

In a white limbo. Like a Fashion Show. Like a collection of insects. Like a ballet. Romanticism that goes beyond the ‘contemporary’ and its conceptualisms, simultaneously cooled and made incandescent by a look of lacerating and distant citation, dedication and oxymoron. A journey through the body that exposes itself in the most extreme, aseptic and ascetic nudity, carrier of wonderful clothes in which to hide and celebrate its darkness, exalting and projecting itself in a mythological horizon. Sylphidarium evokes the choreography that was the origin of the romantic ballet, La Sylphide, featuring Maria Taglioni in 1832, the affirming act of the pointe shoes and the tutu. It evolves in Les Sylphides, abstract evocation of its moon-like fumisterie of 1909, mutating now towards entomology with the sylphs, beetles that feed on carrion and are used by scientists to trace the time of death of a body.
An autopsy of classical ballet, transformed and hybridized by gymnastics, acrobatics and bodybuilding, presenting an aerobic finale, modeled on Jane Fonda’s keep-fit videos, with spatial silver outfits, in the midst of a white scene that wants to repeat the dazzling effect of twirling tutus. The fantasy connects with the ironic dismantling of balletic scenarios, of the story of Adolphe Nourrit, as the upward leaps fight against the disarticulation of the erect posture or freeze in tableaux that seem to stop time in a hybrid frame between the past, today and the future.
A glowing work, supported by the highly mobile music composed by Francesco Antonioni and the iridescent, real, slightly crepuscular and imaginative lighting by Fabio Sajiz. A reflection on the forms of tradition in order to draw a mutant body, surpassing stereotypes typical of the “contemporary” genre, to venture into uncharted territories that go beyond the etiquette of predefined shapes and also that of contamination, in search of its generative urgency for expression.

© Collettivo Cinetico

performances

13 September 2016 [WP]
Torino Danza 2016
Torino, Teatro Carignano
Marléne Prodigo, violin; Flavio Tanzi, drums; Francesco Antonioni, electronics.

22 September 2016
Le vie dei festival 2016
Roma, Teatro Vascello

14 October 2016
Vie Festival 2016
Bologna, Arena del Sole.

29 October 2016
Firenze, CanGo Studio.
More info

10 December 2016
Ferrara, Teatro Comunale Claudio Abbado.

12 May 2017
Ascoli, Teatro Ventidio Basso

16 June 2017 [DE P] 
Theaterformen Festival
Hannover, Schauspielhannover-Grosses Haus

17 June 2017
Theaterformen Festival
Hannover, Schauspielhannover-Grosses Haus

28 July 2017
Drodesera Festival
Dro, Centrale Fies

19 October 2017
NID Platform
Gorizia, Teatro Verdi

14 November 2017
Triennale di Milano
Milano, Teatro dell’arte

15 November 2017
Triennale di Milano
Milano, Teatro dell’arte

31 January 2018 [BE P]
Festival Pays de Danses
Liege, Centre culturale Seraing.

5 May 2018
Parma, Teatro delle Briciole.

7 August 2018
Roma, Palazzo Venezia

1 October 2018 [HR P]
Festival MESS
Sarajevo War Theatre

22 June 2019
Walk on water
Mestre, Museo M9

23 June 2019
Walk on water
Mestre, Museo M9

13 October 2019 [GR P]
Dimitria Festival
Thessaloniki

15 February 2020
SPCZD Catania
More info

16 February 2020
SPCZD Catania