LA SAGRA DELLA PRIMAVERA Il rituale del ritorno

EQUILIBRIO DINAMICO DANCE ENSEMBLE

“In my redesign of Rite, the community engages in collective worship. Sacrifice becomes a shared choice of ideals, and death is not a body collapsing to the ground but, rather, a symbolic flight towards a hidden, dreamlike beyond. It’s a passage that none of us know, but throughout life, we try to train ourselves to be ready. How? By being resolved, free of regrets, and fulfilled. Ready.

I approached Stravinsky with discipline. Stravinsky demanded my attention, mathematical calculation, and a quest for harmony. Seeking it was a challenge that led me to his conclusion about music and art in general: 

“By its very nature, music cannot explain anything: neither emotions, nor points of view, nor feelings, nor natural phenomena. It explains only itself.” (I. Stravinsky)

Roberta Ferrara

“What remains of the Sagra after the Sagra? Starting from this question and the desire to amplify a single moment, that of the final sacrifice, I wanted to explore the concepts of ‘chronological time’ and ‘psychological time’ by juxtaposing an electronic counterpart to Stravinsky’s score to create an ‘other’ space-time, solitary and interior.”

Benedetto Boccuzzi

Roberta Ferrara opens 2024 with a new creation for her company, Equilibrio Dinamico Dance Company, co-produced with ArtGarage and ResextEnsa/Porta D’oriente National Dance Production Center, with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Teatro Pubblico Pugliese, and the Municipality of Bari.

A creation that follows a sequence of rituals where primal energies, visceral emotions, and pagan sublimations coalesce through a choreographic script reimagined on the bodies of the ten dancers from Eko Dance Project chosen through auditions. The breath of “The Rite of Spring.” Roberta Ferrara’s ritual of return opens to collaboration with Pompea Santoro in the role of dramaturge and with composer Benedetto Boccuzzi, who, through electronics, traverses the Stravinskian score, commenting on it and transposing it into a new augmented and multidimensional space.

Always fascinated by ritual forms, the choreographer sees in rituals the essence of gesture, time, care as sharing, and the gathering of the collective.

Spring itself has its eternal cycle, the slow gestation, the agonizing and astonishing spectacle of the bud coming into the light. Then comes the impetuous explosion in a parade of colors, where the flower blooms fully only when its time has come, then manifesting itself boldly and beautifully, luminously. Because splendor is always eager to come into the light. From darkness to light, birth, death, and then rebirth; the dance of cyclicity.

From the genius of Igor Stravinsky, who does not invent or create but reveals other realities, hidden, that exist outside of oneself and manifest themselves, the choreographer gives life to a reinterpretation where the scenes no longer represent the sacrificial virgin but a utopian community embracing the principle of equality and harmonious coexistence, ready to sacrifice for the common good, collective worship in the name of ideals, a death that prepares for a rebirth into another life that none of us knows. A manifesto, and probably a call, to dormant consciences for which the dancers prepare for this authentic rite, in service of body and spirit. Where the heart soars and where it is still possible to believe in the miracle that something wonderful can still bloom.