Lava Bubbles
site-specific from the project “Nella città, la danza” [in the City, the dance] by Nello Calabrò and Roberto Zappalà
première: 24|25 July 2015 Piazza Università, Catania (I)
for I ART: il Polo Diffuso per le Identità e l’Arte Contemporanea in Sicilia
concept and choreography Roberto Zappalà
dance and collaboration to the contruction Maud de la Purification, Filippo Domini, Alain El Sakhawi, Marco Mantovani, Sonia Mingo, Gaetano Montecasino, Gioia Maria Morisco Castelli, Adriano Popolo Rubbio, Fernando Roldan Ferrer,?Claudia Rossi Valli, Ariane Roustan, Valeria Zampardi
drums Francesco Cusa, Bernardo Guerra
with the participation of Enrico Pitozzi, Stefano Tomassini, Michele Trimarchi
Costumes Debora Privitera
technical direction Sammy Torrisi
sound engineer Gaetano Leonardi
a production by Compagnia Zappalà Danza / Scenario Pubblico Centri Nazionale di Produzione della Danza
for I ART Il Polo Diffuso per le Identità e lArte Contemporanea in Sicilia
Nella città, la danza [Dance in the city] is a new project, a conceptual idea, by Roberto Zappalà
This work and the project of which it is part aim to raise awareness of the relationship between the performance and the territory. The title, Nella città, la danza, indicates the intertwining of dance and the place where dance happens, between the bodies of the dancers and the body of the city, while the subtitle indicates the specific characteristics of the city-stage.
(For Catania, the subtitle is lava bubbles, evoking Mount Etna and representing magma, an incessant activity of boiling, flowing and bursting, as well as the extraordinary sense of rebirth witnessed in Catania every day.)
The aim of the show is to react with the region that hosts it. The city, the region, the local history and culture and, above all, the people who live here, become both containers and contents. The bodies and performances of the dancers describe a specific architectural pattern, so coherent as to become an integral part of the show. The aim is, on the one hand, to investigate how dance, through performance and work on the dancers body, can act on and take hold of the social body of the city, and on the other, to use scenic language to create a sort of essay on social anthropology. In the audiences relationship with dance, the bodies and gestures of everyday life, with its cultural, economic and social stratifications, will give rise to all the contrasts, short circuits, paradoxes and unpredictable events that constitute the portrait of a city.
This project is being run to mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Zappalà Dance Company. Any public performances that arise from the project will be held in the open air in public spaces of significant historic or cultural value, in order to make them as accessible as possible.
Photo Serena Nicoletti