Review: Zappalà Danza’s L’après midi d’un Faune, Boléro, Le Sacre du printemps – the ‘Ecstasy Trilogy’
Graham Spicer sees Compagnia Zappalà Danza in L’après midi d’un Faune, Boléro, Le Sacre du printemps (trilogia dell’estasi) – “painstakingly curated works performed by dancers of talent and great dedication”
Milan’s MilanOltre festival, dedicated to contemporary dance, has reached its 38th edition, and opened with Roberto Zappalà’s Compagnia Zappalà Danza, a company and choreographer that consistently provide painstakingly curated works performed by dancers of talent and great dedication. The dancers needed these qualities to confront the programme called L’après midi d’un Faune, Boléro, Le Sacre du printemps (trilogia dell’estasi) – the ‘Ecstasy Trilogy’ – performed without interval or pauses, and with disco rhythms and thrusting choreography to introduce each work.
Debussy’s L’aprés midi d’un Faune, Ravel’s Boléro, and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps. What more can be said? Quite a lot, as it turned out.
Black figures wearing ram’s heads that glowed in the dark, gazed at a pool of light, downstage, which a Faune was slowly being drawn towards. Until moments before he had been dressed like them, but under his horns and black cloak he had a white textured unitard and an almost comic flattened pom-pom on his groin. He is inquisitive, playful, puzzled. Filippo Domini was remarkable in the solo, thoroughly convincing with every facial expression, and pliable and strong as the sensual creature. Zappalà’s choreography doesn’t try to impress – it is simple, without gimmicks, and thoroughly engrossing.
The disco music that introduced the Faune, appeared again. Modern tribal music? It gave way to Ravel’s Boléro, another primal rhythmic throb. The rams removed their horned masks, the black hooded cloaks below hiding their faces. Others joined them until two dozen ominous figures were on stage. With a nod to Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, they removed their hoods to reveal Venetian carnival masks and as the lights brightened we saw that both men and women were wearing feminine heeled shoes. As six of their number walked to the footlights and started to place their hands in front of them to open their cloaks, I was ready for a Rocky Horror moment with corsets and suspenders, and yet… ta-dah… they were naked, with not even a whisp of body hair to cover their skin.
The three nude couples – female-female, male-male, and female-male – danced together with ballroom posing, and expansive port de bras, but without tango leg entwining or other Spanish flavours. The intensity of the movement gradually increased with that of the music, several more hooded figures revealed their nakedness too, and it finished in a writhing frenzy. Effective and tasteful.
More disco led to The Rite of Spring. Maybe the less successful of the three as there was no apparent structured growth in what is a half-hour-plus piece, and no ‘Chosen One’ to give a focus. The dancers, though, were thrilling in many moments, especially the fast backwards running, just narrowly missing the large backcloths (featuring an early-19th century cityscape – a reference to the period of the works?) and the many energetic, coordinated group sequences. The dancers looked as though they’d been at the dressing up box with clothes combined at random except for one out of Brigadoon, one like Freddie Mercury, and Filippo Domini still in his Faune costume. The piece sped happily by, and there was a dramatic blink-and-you’ve-missed-it final moment when a giant net, hanging over the stage from the beginning, dropped, entrapping them all.
Zappalà’s company has become a fixture at the festival and should remain so!
Graham Spicer, aka ‘Gramilano’, is a writer, director and photographer based in Milan. He was a regular columnist for Opera Now magazine and wrote for the BBC until transferring to Italy. His articles have appeared in various publications from Woman’s Weekly to Gay Times, and he wrote the Danza in Italia column for Dancing Times magazine. Graham was the historical advisor on Codice Carla, the 2023 documentary on Italian ballerina Carla Fracci.
Graham also works as a dance photographer, and his photos have appeared in many books, theatre programmes, and magazines, including Dancing Times, Dance Spirit and Ballet2000, as well as all the major Italian newspapers.
He is a member of the Dance Section of The Critics’ Circle.
