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Mauro Astolfi: Diving into the Ocean of Dance written by Philip Szporer
Many people attend dance performance to see beauty, and dancers in turn perform to give it to them. It’s a passionate profession. For Mauro Astolfi, artistic director and founder of the Romebased Spellbound Contemporary Ballet, dance is an “ocean”, a welcoming place in which he imagines himself “diving” to uncharted depths to find the inspiration and motivation to express himself. In his youth, Astolfi was an avid gymnast, a sport that demanded extreme commitment and dedication. Then his interests turned to dance. It was over thirty years ago when he travelled to New York to study and live a life in dance. During that formative time, his teachers included the great American masters Merce Cunningham and Paul Taylor. Cunningham is often cited for his insights into clarity and speed, while Taylor grasped a style that was muscular and fluid. The formidable Martha Graham, for whom heroic technique and theatrical clarity were imperatives, trained both men, though each was propelled towards fundamentally different methods of creation. Cunningham and Taylor became important role models, each in turn sparking Astolfi’s urge to start creating his own work, embrace his own voice, and expand his artistic pursuits. He returned to Italy in 1994, where he established the Spellbound Dance Company. Two years ago, Astolfi renamed the troupe the Spellbound Contemporary
Mauro Astolfi
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Spellbound Contemporary Ballet April 2, 2013 at 8pm
www.spellboundance.com
IRVINE
BARCLAY THEATRE www.thebarclay.org
all dance photos from a series by Marco Bravi
Ballet. The company is one of the established leaders of new Italian choreography, and is perhaps best known for its unique vocabulary of expression – the dances he creates are poetic, yet dynamic, combining athleticism with grace. The company name change marks a significant philosophical shift. “We’ve had the feeling in the past five years that ‘contemporary’ could express a much more mature meaning of our work, because when we started out I had many neo-classical productions,” Astolfi says.
And, as the Spellbound website indicates, “Being contemporary is the heart of our focus and research in its broadest sense, which transcends stylistic motives and merges with a line of thought which recognizes the contemporary, today.” In the evolving world of dance, categorization is a familiar and often-necessary convention. Contemporary ballet, for example, is a form of dance influenced by both classical ballet and modern dance. Its training technique and use of pointe work stem from classical ballet, although it permits a greater range of movement that may not adhere to the strict body lines set forth by various ballet schools. At the same time, many of its concepts come from the ideas and innovations of 20th century modern dance, including floor work and turn-in of the legs. The ‘contemporary’ in Contemporary Ballet links to an exploration of the total movement potential of the body. There are no set standards or defined styles. Innovation often seeks to express a personal vision, and ideas are often developed through the use of collaborative methods and a cross-pollination of approaches. Astolfi feels passionately about dance. In his working method, he builds a unique and personal signature that spans the broad spectrum of movement possibilities, giving the group the opportunity to create a repertoire based on a wide variety of techniques. As a choreographer, he seems to communicate with the dancers in a simple and direct mancontinued...
IRVINEBARCLAYPRESENTS the 2012-13 International Contemporary Dance Series
ner, blending dance and theatrical principles. In the expanse of this “uncharted ocean”, which, as he indicates, is inspirationally linked to his emotional state, his fluid building of choreographic ideas is perhaps best described as a kind of uninhibited physical thinking. Astolfi believes the mix of contemporary dance and ballet achieves great results. To that end, he places an emphasis on pushing the capacities of the company’s virtuosic dancers in terms of their technique and their interpretive skills. In 1945, George Balanchine in Notes on Choreography put forward his evolving notions about ballet: “A ballet may contain a story, but the visual spectacle, not the story, is the essential element. The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye – and the audience, in its turn, must train itself actually to see what is performed upon the stage. It is the illusion created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician. If the illusion fails the ballet fails, no matter how well a program note tells the audience that it has succeeded.” Those precepts hold true today.
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The breadth of vision in Astolfi’s work is such that on subsequent viewings you’ll discover hidden nuances and greater delights. His unencumbered energy, vivid theatricality, and rigorous dancing fuel the choreography. The two works on Spellbound’s program reflect Astolfi’s dance-driven aesthetic, as well as highlighting the technical excellence of the company members. Downshifting is described in a program note as “a vehicle of energy, a channel of communication between individuals, a mysterious door to touch the soul and an indispensable means to understand the secret language of nature.” Lost For Words is divided in two sections that wrap around Downshifting. The works convey a supple strength and a beguiling flow of movement. Lost has a graceful tempo, with the dancers’ pliant, intertwining shapes and positions defining the duets and trios in the piece, while Downshifting is a more stripped-back pure movement piece possessing fluid gestural phrasing for its nine dancers. Musically, Astolfi is sound-inclusive and the music compositions he chooses propel the dances in a synthesis of styles and idioms. He sets Lost for Words to music by Loscil, the electronic/ambient music project coming out of Vancouver, British Columbia, as well as Henirich Ignaz Franz Biber’s Passacaglia for The Guardian Angel. The latter piece for solo violin is based on four notes that are repeated 65 times, and evokes the
footsteps of the guardian angel. (Equally, it forms the last section of the composer’s monumental Mystery Sonatas.) There is also a flood of words adding a further textural component to the rich score, and reinforcing the notion that we are dominated in our lives by words and slogans. Downshifting, meanwhile, is set to a range of music from J.S. Bach and sung by the Norwegian vocal ensemble Pust. Northrop Frye, the visionary thinker, argued that the nurturing of the imagination is a vital task for the functioning of a democratic society. Always topical, he wrote – and I’m paraphrasing liberally – that without poets, painters, dancers, actors, and writers who can imagine a new future, what future can we have? Frye was defending the merits of a good liberal education – advancing the imperative to awaken the imagination, and to imagine new possibilities and fresh opportunities. In that context, the work of dance artists like Astolfi and his company members at Spellbound Contemporary Ballet represents a vitally important moment in the evolution of current streams of dance. And, as Frye also significantly wrote, “Great art refuses to go away.”
Philip Szporer is a Montreal-based lecturer, writer and filmmaker.
IRVINEBARCLAYPRESENTS the 2012-13 International Contemporary Dance Series