Emanuela Montanari and Antonino Sutera dance Susanna Beltrami’s Il danno in Milan
The former La Scala dancers star in a dance version of Josephine Hart’s Damage, with young dancer Nicolò Brizzi and video projections by Salvatore Lazzaro, at the Teatro Franco Parenti for two nights.
Two La Scala dancers, Emanuela Montanari and Antonino Sutera, are back on a Milan stage this month in Il danno (Damage), subtitled Anatomia di una caduta (‘anatomy of a fall’). It is a work by the choreographer Susanna Beltrami and plays at the Teatro Franco Parenti on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 October. They are joined by the young dancer Nicolò Brizzi.
Produced by DANCEHAUSpiù – Centro Nazionale di Produzione della Danza – the piece takes its inspiration from Josephine Hart’s novel and Louis Malle’s 1992 film adaptation with Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche. It was first seen at MilanOltre Festival in 2025. The company presents the evening as a meeting of dance, cinema and literature – ‘three languages to live a love story’.
A forbidden passion and a lost son
At its centre is a man divided between desire and guilt. He is caught up in a forbidden passion and then loses his son. The past resurfaces and the son returns, transfigured, from the mists of another world. He has been struck down by his father’s betrayal and by the woman the father believed to be his ‘for ever’.
A story “steeped in madness, impulse and death” in which the two protagonists are at once victims and executioners. Beltrami calls it a Greek tragedy in contemporary dress. Her characters are driven by inner forces they cannot control, which lead them inexorably towards catastrophe. In her view, primordial passions, unresolved trauma and the violation of family taboos do not belong only to ancient myth. Seen through psychoanalysis, they live on beneath the skin of modern man, ready to shatter his fragile armour of rationality and control.
Dance, film and a video score
Past and present blur in this psychoanalytic drama with a strongly cinematic stamp, in which gesture and image become ‘emotional montage’. Lazzaro, who made and directed the video and collaborated on the stage direction, multiplies the levels on which the characters’ inner worlds are perceived. The body is fused with its own projection in a single, powerful vision of trauma.
Freud on stage
The programme notes read the story in Freudian terms. Stephen, a successful politician, devoted husband and father, is the perfectly structured Ego, and his life is built on the rules of the Super-ego: duty, morality and convention. Anna’s arrival is not a coup de foudre but a trigger, the violent irruption of the Id. In her, Stephen sees drive in its pure state, and his Ego cracks. His obsession, the notes argue, is not love but a ravenous need to satisfy a desire that obliterates everything else.
Anna is ‘not a simple femme fatale‘ but a ghost, the embodiment of repetition compulsion. Her original trauma was an incestuous bond with her brother, which ended in his suicide. Her affair with Stephen is therefore an unconscious scenario she stages to master a trauma that in fact masters her. The pair meet ‘not as two people but as two wounds’.
The dancers
Sutera graduated from La Scala’s ballet school in 1999 and joined the company the same year, winning the Danza&Danza and Positano prizes as a young talent. He was named principal in 2010 and now works as a maître at La Scala.
Montanari joined La Scala’s corps de ballet in 1994 and became a soloist. After working with Bigonzetti, William Forsythe and Petit, she was chosen by Sylvie Guillem to dance Myrta in her new Giselle, at La Scala and on tour, and again to dance with her during her farewell tour in 2015.
Brizzi is a recent graduate of the DanceHaus Hip Hop Department, described as “a young talent who has already emerged as a revelation”.
The choreographer and the creative team
Beltrami returned from the Merce Cunningham Foundation in New York in 1986 and became one of the choreographers who marked a fresh start for contemporary dance in Italy. Her early works include Fuga in valzer, Dressoir and Sopra un picco in Darien, followed by pieces inspired by Spanish theatre and dance, such as El amor brujo and Diablo, Storia Flamenca. From 1995 she collaborated for many years with the étoile Luciana Savignano, co-founder of Pier Lombardo Danza, now Compagnia Susanna Beltrami. She is co-artistic director and resident choreographer of DANCEHAUSpiù, directs the Accademia Susanna Beltrami and in 2019 founded the DanceHaus Hip Hop Department.
Sara Pezzolo is the assistant. Lighting and sound are by Matteo Bittante, and stylistic direction and costumes by Luz Maria Jaramillo, with tailoring by Giorgia Andreazza and video make-up by Claudia Loi. The ballet masters are Matteo Bittante, Luca Napoli and Alessandro Norrito. Special thanks go to Movie Chrome, Monica Bragagnoli and Luz Maria Jaramillo.
Dates and booking
Il danno is at the Teatro Franco Parenti, Milan, on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 October at 7.45pm. Booking is via the Teatro Franco Parenti, with more information at dhpiu.com.
