by Michele Abbondanza and Antonella Bertoni
with: Antonella Bertoni
lights: Lucio Diana
technical direction: Enrico Peco
organization: Luisa Costa
production: Compagnia Abbondanza/Bertoni
with the support of Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali - Dip. Spettacolo, Provincia Autonoma di Trento - Assessorato alla Cultura, Comune di Rovereto - Assessorato alla Cultura, Cassa Rurale di Folgaria - Filiale di Rovereto
thanks to: Danio Manfredini, CID Centro Internazionale della Danza, CRT Centro di Ricerca per il Teatro
We leave the five-year cycle of the project I have an Other-ache. The final image of Polis dissolves (2005), last part of the triptych, with its weary figures, immolated on the third sacrificial altar. After the paths from the family to the state and from the couple to the mass (Alcesti, 2002 and Medea, 2004), we feel the need for a silent atmosphere, rarefied and more intimate: as if the stage floodlights turned and repositioned themselves from the outside to the inside, from he exterior to the interior, from the "other" to the "self".
Let us imagine an solitary body, abandoned on the stage, seed of a new dynasty, witness of an ending as well as founder and survival of a different dawn. In hesitation and immobility, it will bring to light its utopia, and this will give sense to its being alive, alleging against all evidence that life does have a meaning. Beginning of a path in solitude, of a new departure, of a crossing.
In that body are all bodies and the history of the whole of humanity: a female body, then. And since words fail before images, the human figure will appear primarily as a shape; in its being aura and frontier, we have tried and understand how the soul can keep itself within this profound wrapping, and how, with wrenches and silence, it can create a mystery out of the substance by which it is imprisoned. Material of the essence of universe (or "of the dreams", W. Shakespeare), so proficiently combined, but still source of new perceptions, if only we listen carefully: the wind, the river, the mountain from which it originates; the births which generated it and which it will still generate; the stones in its bones, the salt, the iron melted in its veins. A shape that, if shook by deep passion, will transform itself and remodel the substance it contains into something distant and wholly different.
Michele Abbondanza / Antonella Bertoni
Michele Abbondanza received his technical training in New York with Alwin Nikolais and Merce Cunningham. On his return to Italy in the early 1980s, he entered the most lively and stimulating environment of Italian dance at the time, the "Teatro e Danza La Fenice" Company, in Venice, directed by Carolyn Carlson. In 1984, when the relationship between the Franco-American dancer and the Venetian theatre came to an end, Michele Abbondanza, together with other dancers, formed the company Sosta Palmizi. In order to continue his artistic career independently, Michele Abbondanza left the company in 1987 and began teaching at the Accademia Antoniana di Arte Drammatica in Bologna. In 1988 he joined Carolyn Carlson's Company once again, this time in Paris, where he met Antonella Bertoni, a dancer who had trained in Rome and Paris.
After that, they decided to form a duo, their first performance being La notte degli inganni with live music by SteveLacy. In collaboration with the Drodesera Festival, they also created Terramara (1991), Pabbaja-abbandono della casa (1994), Spartacus-il dì che più non c'è (1995).
At the end of 1995 the couple founded the Compagnia Abbondanza/Bertoni. In 1996 they created for the company Aterballetto of Reggio Emilia the performance Andavano e andando ballavano. In the same year, with the directors Letizia Quintavalla and Bruno Stori, they began an artistic-productive partnership that lead, in 1997, to create Romanzo d'infanzia and, in 1999, Fiaba Buia. In 1997 the couple presented Mozart Hotel, a work for seven dancers, and subsequently Mozart Strasse, a street version of the performance, with live music. In 1998 they collaborated to Woyzeck with the Italian actor Alessandro Haber and signed the choreography of the show.
In 2000 the couple started working at the project I have an Other-ache, freely inspired by characters from Greek tragedy, that includes Alcesti (2002), Medea (2004) and Polis (2005).
In 2006 made its debut Try, the first solo of the Company, performed by Antonella Bertoni, and Home, home, home.
Abbondanza and Bertoni study and practice Zen which deeply affects their creations, as well as their ongoing teaching activity. Both in Italy and abroad, they lead workshops dealing with the study of dancing techniques and of choreographic and theatrical compositions, carrying it out through improvisations to achieve a totality of artistic gesture. Since 1997 Michele Abbondanza teaches in Milan at the School Theatre "Piccolo Teatro" directed by Luca Ronconi.
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