Reworking Contemporary Italian Dance: Repertoire Transmission and Reconstruction from the Eighties to Today

Lecture with Prof. Elena Cervellati (University of Bologna)

Today, Italian contemporary dance is searching for itself through choreographic processes of transmission and reconstruction of its recent past, striving to keep alive the actuality of dance works from the last four decades that are projected onto the present in an effort to make them part of it. Choreographic investigations into reconstruction, restaging and reenactment have flourished on the international dance scene and consolidated in Italy through numerous projects. This talk will examine two case studies. The first is the extensive project RIC.CI: Reconstruction, Italian Contemporary Dance (1980s-90s), ongoing since 2011 as a collaboration between dance critic and scholar Marinella Guatterini and a wide network of Italian theaters and festivals. The second concerns the solo Tu non mi perderai mai (You Will Never Lose Me), choreographed and performed in 2005 by Raffaella Giordano, one of the protagonists of the Italian contemporary dance world, and recently transmitted to Stefania Tansini, a dancer from a younger generation. These experiments in repertoire transmission stand for memory processes that ultimately aim to define artistic and human identities that are individual and personal, but also generational and cultural. They result in performance experiences that are inevitably different from the original ones, while trying to also remain the same.