NoGravity | 2010

Teatro Nazionale di Milano

Journal of Dance and Ballet: Chronicles of Dance
January 22, 2010

The show Nogravity made its debut on December 6 at the Ventaglio Nazionale theater, the result of an experiment conceived by Emiliano Pellisari, author and theater director, and commissioned by Antonio Gnecchi Ruscone of AGR Association. Pellisari's project to stage the evolution of the human body canceling the force of gravity, aroused the interest of the Milanese theater producer Ghecchi and his staff, already known for having organized some of the most famous productions in the field of multiform artistic expression (music, dance, theatre) including AEROS , The Parsons Dance Company, Waterwall. The idea starts from the use of a sophisticated theatrical machine, conceived and created by Pellisari, with which the dancers, within a large cubic stage of 8 meters per side, move in a new dimension that allows the protagonists to fly freely revealing all the expressive potential of the body in the air. The choreographies, curated by Brian Sanders, former dancer and author of Momix and currently choreographer of Rockpolitik, Adriano Celentano's program, run through all the phases of human evolutionary life, describing the efforts of man who tends upwards with the means more varied, to reach the serenity and lightness lost in the earthly paradise. From those to the limits of the impossible used by the Chinese circus, to the more banal elevator, up to the contemporary mania of bunjee jumping: in the various paintings the dancers perform acrobatics and unexpected evolutions facilitated by the movements of lights and colors and accompanied by music, now pounding , now more lounge. This whirlwind of effects, however, relegates dance to a secondary role, distracting the spectator from the narrative structure of the succession of scenes (that of the final Human Kaleidoscope is very suggestive), to lead him, rather, to find an answer to the question: but how does the machine work?