Escaping the body: the dark atmospheres of Marco Goecke's choreography at the Teatro Romano

Spoleto, July 3, 2023 - Marco Goecke is the next big name in dance coming to the Teatro Romano for Spoleto 66: friday July 7 and Saturday, July 8 at at 9:30 p.m. Dark Matter shows in three different choreographies that hypnotic style with dark atmospheres that has made him world famous. Dance has marked his life from the very beginning: born in Pina Bausch's city of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, he approached theater as young as 14, in a youth marked from panic attacks and saved by the miracle of his own precocious talent. He recounts, "The engine of my work is anguish; it can become a source of hope. What I try to do with the fast movements of my vocabulary is to make anxiety visible and palpable to transform it into beauty. To escape from the body, to escape from one's limitations." Resident choreographer of Scapino Ballet Rotterdam between 2005 and 2011, he is regarded as one of the greatest choreographic discoveries of the 21st century. He has received commissions from international companies such as Les Ballets de Monte Carlo, Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris, Ballet Wien, Pacific Northwest Ballet Seattle, Staatsballett Berlin, Ballet Bayerische Staatsoper, and Companhia de Dança São Paulo, Brazil. In 2004 Pina Bausch invited him to the Tanztheater Festival with two works, Blushing and Mopey.

Goecke brings to Spoleto three choreographies fundamental to understanding its choreographic language. Conceived as a tribute to Princess Caroline of Monaco, who in 2009 was honored at the Grimaldi Forum for her many years of service to dance, the solo Tué draws on the music of French singer-songwriter Barbara, whose melancholy and strong-willed voice, at once warm and expressive, contrasts with the quick, nervous movements of Maude Sabourin, a dancer from Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal, who onstage embodies the chansonnière in a growing tension between nervousness and reserve, fragility and strength. In Midnight Raga, the music of Ravi Shankar is the starting point. Despite the Oriental-Indian inspiration, which is also reflected in the heavy blue silk fabrics of the costumes, one element remains unmistakable: the nervous language of the movements - Goecke's own - tailored for dancers Rosario Guerra and Louis Steinmetz. Inspired from a quote from from Le visage de la Paix by French poet Paul Eluard, finally, Whiteout is a breath of summer lightness in which the carefree joy of the Ballett Saarbrücken dancers is felt in every fiber. But Goecke warns, "There is no need to understand dance from top to bottom, one cannot understand everything, that would be boring. Better to let what you see slip to a deeper level. I have created so many pieces that I think there is a connection between them, the choreographies follow me like ghosts, good or bad ghosts. When I go to to sleep, I check under the bed for something or someone. I always fear a specter behind the curtain."