"In Mozart's music there is," said Goethe, "a creative force that continues to act from generation to generation." This force, in 1991, on the centenary of the composer's death, inspired the creations of numerous choreographers: Roland Petit, Jiří Kylián, Maurice Béjart, John Neumeier, Amedeo Amodio, Mauro Bigonzetti, Fabrizio Monteverde. This summer, taking on Mozart are Michele Abbondanza and Antonella Bertoni, former dancers with Carolyn Carlson, already authors of incisive duo performances such as the lyrical Terramara and the mournful Pabbaja – the abandonment of the house. With their new company, they dedicate a project to Mozart in two stages entitled Sull’intimo dell’animo e del vestire. The first stage, Mozart Hotel, presented in August in Castiglioncello, has the traditional form of a show conceived for a theatrical space. The second, Mozart Strasse, created for Rovereto, reworks the material from the first, deconstructing and reconstructing it in relation to the performance spaces chosen in the city and the interaction with an orchestra that will perform Mozart live.
"The sources of inspiration for both stages," explains Abbondanza, "are mainly three: some letters of Mozart that clearly represent, in our opinion, the light and playful aspect of the composer's music, a writing by Goethe on the divine genius of Mozart's scores, and Nathalie de Saint Phalle's book, Hotel letterari. We imagined an imaginary hotel, of which Antonella and I are the caretakers. In this dilapidated hotel (transformed into an open space in the street version), only Mozart is listened to, music that serves as a cue to describe, through the language of dance, the tormented and erotic nature of the two main protagonists. Subsequently, a strange group of young people arrives at the hotel, who are quickly transformed, captivated by Mozart's music."
"We tried to recreate," says Bruno Stori, the dramaturge of Abbondanza's project, "the atmosphere of the hotels de Saint Phalle talks about, hotels frequented by artists of all kinds. We imagined one of them, marked by Mozart's passage: anyone in that hotel relives the extreme impulses of melancholy, joy, and sensuality inherent in the Austrian composer's music."
Aiming to propose a theater against depression in line with the emotional dualism of Mozart's music (excerpts from the Piano Concerto in A Major, Symphony No. 25 and No. 40, German Dance No. 6), the project alternates almost neoclassical adagios with a dance of primordial register. All this is accompanied by texts and captions by Mozart, Goethe, and Stori himself.
