SPELLBOUND CONTEMPORARY BALLET

Spellbound 25

choreographies Mauro Astolfi, Marco Goecke, Marcos Morau

BUY TICKET BOOK

ph. Marco Bravi

MAURO ASTOLFI

He founded the company Spellbound Contemporary Ballet with Valentina Marini in 1994 after having lived in the USA for a long time. He has also been active as a freelance choreographer creating original pieces for prestigious institutions around the world. He is also a guest teacher at many dance centers and since October 2009 he has been the artistic director of D.A.F. Rome. From 2016 to 2018 he was guest teacher at the Scuola di Ballo del Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.

ph. Regina Brocke

MARCO GOECKE

Since his debut as a choreographer in the year 2000 at the Theaterhagen, he has become very popular as an artist due to his special language of movement. His work has become part of the repertoire of the most prestigious international dance companies. Since 2005 he has been appointed resident choreographer at the Stuttgart Ballet, between 2006 and 2011 at the Scapino Ballet, Rotterdam, and since 2013 he has become associated choreographer at the Nederlands Dans Theater. Since January 2009 he has been resident artist at the Gauthier Dance Stuttgart and from season 2019/20 he has become the new artistic director of the State Ballet Hannover.

ph. Edu Pérez

MARCOS MORAU

He received his training in Barcelona, Valencia and New York and it was his final project that gained him the extraordinary award of the Institut del Teatre. He completed his internship as an assistant choreographer at the Nederlands Dans Theater II and with the company IT Dansa directed by Catherine Allard. He includes photography and theatre in his research work. He is acknowledged to be one of the most creative artists of his generation and besides directing his own company, La Veronal founded in 2005, he has created original productions for prestigious dance groups such as National Dance Company of Spain, Scapino Ballet Rotterdam, Skånes Dansteater, Göteborg Operans Danskompani, Ballet de Lorraine and Carte Blanche Norway among others.

WONDER BAZAAR, Foto di Sara Meliti

production Spellbound Contemporary Ballet

with the support of MiBACT and Regione Lazio – Dipartimento Cultura, Politiche Giovanili e Lazio creativo

co-production MilanOltre e Cultur Partner.

Äffi

choreography Marco Goecke

choreography assistant Giovanni di Palma

performer Mario La Terza

set and costumes design Marco Goecke

lighting Udo Haberland

music Johnny Cash

new staging for Spellbound Contemporary Ballet

duration 12’

Äffi is a choreography by Marco Goecke for a male solo dancer moving from ballet style arriving to contaminations of German tanztheater. He has a vocabulary of quick gestures which allow him to surpass the boundaries of the human body, as if to get away from anatomical limitations. In the documentary A fleur de peau Goecke explains that anxiety is the driving force behind his work but it can become a source of hope by making it visible and substantial and transforming it into beauty.

Marte

choreography Marcos Morau

choreography assistant Lorena Nogal Navarro

performers Lorenzo Capozzi, Riccardo Ciarpella, Linda Cordero, Maria Cossu, Mario Laterza, Giuliana Mele, Mateo Mirdita, Caterina Politi, Aurora Stretti

set and costumes Marcos Morau

lighting design Marco Policastro

duration 25’

A new piece by Marcos Morau who stages the contradiction between the need to belong to a community and the extreme individualism of contemporary society, between the need to feel accepted on one hand and the wish to be unique on the other.

A group of young people joins a celebration; the story is set somewhere in Europe in the 21st century. Spanish traditional music and an avant-garde rhythm are the link among the participants in this ritual with a mix of pleasure, desire and tension while waiting for an uncertain future.

Unknown Woman

choreography Mauro Astolfi

choreography assistant Alessandra Chirulli

performer Maria Cossu

light design Luci Marco Policastro

duration 14’

Unknown Woman is at the same time a real and imaginary story, it is a repository of the memories and thoughts of twenty years of cooperation between the choreographer Mauro Astolfi and the dancer Maria Cossu. Bodies tell secrets like note books of cryptic and disorganized records which need to be read although it can be difficult. It is the staging of a journey to discover one’s own self and the other by having shared artistic research and life for a long time.

Wonder Bazaar

choreography Mauro Astolfi

choreography assistant Alessandra Chirulli

performers Lorenzo Capozzi, Riccardo Ciarpella, Linda Cordero, Maria Cossu, Mario Laterza, Giuliana Mele, Mateo Mirdita, Caterina Politi, Aurora Stretti

set and lighting design Marco Policastro

duration 35’

Wonder Bazaar is an emporium where one finds some spare parts to repair the damages of a complex and out-of-control life. It is the outpost of a humanity supported by obsolete technological devices where each individual curls up into himself, where human relationships are minimal leaving space for a blind trust in machines.

However, some people find relief from existential anxiety in piling machines on the shelves and working on a mysterious and risky project which re-writes the terms of an alienated contemporary life. It is exactly in this cemetery of broken or semi-functioning machines that it is possible to find space to give meaning to one’s existence, a meaning which is not imposed from the outside but springs from within.