Pippo Delbono, in First Person
There is something authentic in the actor who dances: the body of an actor playing a character is usually a rhetorical body, commenting with the body on the role being portrayed. When they dance, they break that boundary.
Pippo Delbono
We have an image of Pippo Delbono in Rovereto from many years ago: it was 1990, the Festival edition culminated with Nelken by Pina Bausch, and it brought to Oriente Occidente several artists who, for various reasons, could be considered part of the family of the late German choreographer who passed away last summer.
Delbono opened the Festival with Il Muro, a lucid and humane work featuring ten protagonists: from dancers Raffaella Giordano and Antonio Carallo to a key figure in our theatrical experimentation like Danio Manfredini, from Delbono himself to actor Pepe Robledo, who arrived from South America with burning themes in his heart and has always been a close collaborator of Pippo.
Il Muro, with its actors and dancers, with their stories and gestures, was inhabited by a truth on stage that reflected the Festival Oriente Occidente’s long-standing gaze beyond genres, as well as a belief in the special power of the body. A vision that carries us into the beauty of movement beyond stereotypes, in love with a dance, as Delbono says, “not as a preordained and rhetorical system, but one that relates to the space of emotions.” This is something that deeply inhabits Delbono’s work and emerges powerfully in Pippo Delbono. Corpi senza menzogna, the book by Leonetta Bentivoglio, presented at the Festival before Racconti di giugno. It is a touching recomposition of public and private, a tale of choreography within the theater, and a revelation of our society, starting from that Dance, Dance, Otherwise We Are Lost, said by a young Roma girl to Pina Bausch and used as the title of the book’s introduction—a sentiment that propels us from Delbono into the 2010 Festival.
Racconti di giugno
Racconti di giugno is an autobiographical monologue that debuted at the Teatro Belli in Rome in 2005 for the Garofano Verde festival curated by Rodolfo Di Giammarco. Delbono describes it as “an encounter with oneself,” which is both a confession and a political act, as it courageously speaks about ourselves, openly declaring to others who we are, including the experience of AIDS. These are the author’s notes:
curiosity for others.
the hidden meaning of relationships.
the red thread of infatuations in performances.
the consciousness of a boundless beauty in stories.
the passion not only ethical in the scenes of life and theater.
the unexpressed yet displayed side of desires.
the ecstasy of things you lose and that others do not forgive you for.
the (many) coincidences of June, the month I was born.
that something about oneself never said, perhaps because it was never asked.
A performance that traverses art and life, a connection never foreign to Delbono's work, from Il tempo degli assassini to the revealing Barboni, and to his encounters with people like Bobò, a microcephalic mute whom Delbono rescued from the asylum in Aversa, where he had lived for forty years. Adopted by the artist, Bobò became a key character in his performances.
WHO IS PIPPO DELBONO
In the early 1980s, together with Argentine actor Pepe Robledo, he worked in Denmark with the Farfa group. He specialized in Eastern techniques for the actor/dancer. Upon returning to Italy, he created his first theatrical show in 1987: Il tempo degli assassini, with which he toured Italy and South America. He met Pina Bausch, who invited him to Wuppertal, where he participated in the creation of some pieces for the company. Delbono and Robledo continued their independent work. Among his theatrical works are Il Muro (1990), La rabbia (1995), dedicated to Pasolini, and Barboni (1997), which won the Ubu Award for "a research conducted between art and life." With the documentary Guerra in 2003, he won the David di Donatello. Other theatrical titles include Urlo (2004), Racconti di giugno (2005), Questo buio feroce (2006), and La menzogna (2008). In 2009, he presented the documentary La paura at the Locarno Film Festival, a denunciation of our society filmed entirely with a mobile phone. He is one of the most appreciated figures in contemporary theater worldwide.
www.pippodelbono.it
[1] Leonetta Bentivoglio, Pippo Delbono. Corpi senza menzogna, Barbès Editore, Florence, 2009. The words of Pippo Delbono cited are taken from conversations with Bentivoglio, which make up the book.
