Four dancers who never touch each other, while sharing the same stage: Pastorale was designed before the Covid emergency and distancing rules, by Daniele Ninarello one of the most promising choreographers on the Italian scene, and since 2007 a keen believer in personal research and style.
Born of the Turinese choreographer’s desire to deal with the theme of reunification, the rediscovery, through a 'ritual' form, of the harmony of one's body with the whole, with universal rhythm, Pastorale owes its gestation to a visual experience which the choreographer underwent at the MOMA in New York on seeing the famous, homonymous canvas by Paul Klee Pastoral (Rhythms), painted in 1927. Just as Klee drew repetitive sequences of symbols in line, evidence of an obsessiveness of the sign that evolves in while self-referring, Ninarello shows in his work a cycle of four experiential choreographic rituals designed from anatomical practices, from a simple system of signs.
Sequences repeated by each dancer according to spatial trajectories, developed from the 'basic' rhythm walking- according to the postmodern dictates that extend from Steve Paxton to Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. A paroxysmal game of repetition in an attempt by the individual to try to emerge from himself, to access the Elsewhere. In a mantra-like process, the purpose is to gradually to align with the collective, or in other words, a continuous 'tuning’ between bodies' to bring out a collective mind.
Ninarello’s piece is accompanied by the organic composition of Dan Kinzelman, tonal and symphonic jazz minimalist and his faithful collaborator since the very successful duet Kudoku. This last piece was, in turn, inspired by the creations of the New York “Viking of 6th Avenue”, Moondog, composer and forerunner of postmodernism and world music. In a Pastorale, that has nothing of the bucolic, Ninarello overcomes the nostalgia of unison, and if anything, his creation struggles with the entropy of the cosmos to seek order in Nature.
The show is followed by a meeting-dialogue between Daniele Ninarello and the dramaturg Gaia Clotilde Chernetich.
