DAP Contemporary Dance Gala

New Dance Drama presents

“EN DIALOGUE AVEC SCHUMANN”

• Dancers Benedetta Montefiore and Andrea Risso Teatro alla Scala Milano
• Music by Robert Schumann, orchestrated by Giampaolo Testoni
• Choreography and concept by Emanuela Tagliavia

Premiering nationally, this duet, created for dancers Benedetta Montefiore and Andrea Risso, revisits the connection with Schumann first explored in En écoutant du Schumann, performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 2004.

At the heart of the piece is Robert Schumann’s Carnaval, with its fragmented structure, skillfully transcribed for orchestra by Giampaolo Testoni.

The choreography draws inspiration from Fernand Khnopff’s evocative painting, where a woman lost in memories listens to distant piano music and the interplay of two bodies in motion—expressing attraction and distance, understanding nostalgia, pursuit, and escape.

SOSPESI

• Presented by New Dance Drama
• Music by Davidson Jaconello
• Dancers: Martino Semanzato, MacKenzie Brown Staatstheater Stuttgart
• Choreography and concept by Vittoria Girelli

This duet is an excerpt from a larger choreography originally designed for seven dancers. It forms part of a project that delves into the intricacies of human interaction, using visual and theatrical symbols to convey its narrative. The work draws inspiration from Aristophanes’ comedy The Birds, which envisions an ideal city floating between sky and earth—a liminal space representing the boundary between the known and the unknown, a utopia that defies control and comprehension.

The choreography is influenced by  Hieronymus Bosch’s surreal and intricate vision. His paintings, teeming with fantastical creatures and hybrid beings, provide a rich source of imagery. Birds, insects, angels, humans, and monsters blend into an ever-transforming landscape, inspiring the dancers to embody a sequence of metamorphoses through movement.

The duet presented at DAP, originally a quartet, examines the dynamics between two pairs of dancers, emphasizing their contrasts and similarities in a mirror interplay. Their movements reflect physical and symbolic transformations, embodying the tension between conflict and harmony that defines the human condition. Through an ongoing interplay of opposition and fusion, the choreography evolves toward reconciliation, culminating in the final moment when two dancers unite. For DAP, the two performers will present a reimagined and intimate version of this composition, specially adapted for the occasion.

The performance will be set to Franz Schubert’s Serenade, reinterpreted by composer Davidson Jaconello. The melody, initially lush and polyphonic, undergoes a gradual process of simplification, distilling into a moment of pure delicacy. The piano’s crystalline tones support the choreographic journey, preserving the luminosity of the melody and concluding the piece in a state of contemplation.

WHISPERS OF AN ENDING

• CHOREOGRAPHY Giovanni Napoli
• DRAMATURGY Sarah Mössner
• COSTUMES Louise Flanagan
• DANCERS Giulia Finardi, Alfonso Lopez Gonzalez / Staatstheater Augsburg
• ORIGINAL MUSIC COMPOSITION Giuseppe Villarosa
• LIGHT DESIGN Ron Heinrich

Whispers of an ending is an intimate portrait of what remains when a relationship comes to an end, when words no longer find their place, ears stop listening, and bodies dissolve into distant worlds, like finding yourself in a foreign land, far from home, where all that remains is the echo of an unknown language, a sound we can barely understand.

It is a journey into the fragility of endings, into that profound solitude where the soul wanders.