Text by Gaia Clotilde Chernetich

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Lento e Largo, Cascas d'Ovo and Bate Fado are the three choreographies, three national premieres, through which this edition of Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto celebrates the first ten years of the artistic trajectory designed by the choreographic duo Jonas&Lander, artists-in-residence at this year's Festival. In the space of a short time and since their first meeting in 2010 at the Escola Superior de Dança in Lisbon, where they both trained Jonas Lopes and Lander Patrick have brought to life to a vibrant performative creativity that never ceases to surprise and enchant audiences. Their work, which is gradually forming a recognizable repertoire, has taken on a clear multidisciplinary and international dimension by developing the ability to address to different audiences and contexts. Their approach to choreography aims to to evolve dance toward a fluid, eclectic and engaging dimension that, in the performances, is emphasized both by the work on the body and by the relationship between bodies, objects and the rhythmic-musical dimension. On stage, in their performances, we find an acute creative vitality, a propensity to to stimulate the active participation of the audience and the ability to step outside the canonical formats of choreographic art through the use of innovative devices and formats. Without patterns, preconceptions and predefined expectations, Jonas&Lander build unexpected worlds, an expression of joyful and playful creativity, which expands through open channels from all elements called to participate in the creation. In particular, in each of the three works presented, music and rhythm are not simply driving forces, but are real elements to which a dramaturgical function is assigned.

Over the course of these first ten years, their dance has proven capable of evolving along a non-predetermined path that has unveiled to the public unprecedented perspectives of contemporary choreography. In this first retrospective of their work, we find traces, through the titles on the program, of three different moments in the artistic journey of these exceptional choreographers that correspond to different formats of their work, from duo to ensemble creation, between conventional and unconventional stage spaces. After presenting the performance installation Coin Operated at the Church of St. Agatha in last year's edition, this year's Festival thus offers a further insight into the stage work and multifaceted creativity of a duo of artists who never fail to invite their spectators inside a fantastic, sophisticated, irreverent and queer imaginary.

Slow and Wide (2019) is a performance in which human performers, drones, and robots share the stage. The visual inspiration for this creation is rooted in the painting of Hieronymous Bosch and in particular is related to his ability to depict scenes of an apocalyptic nature through the particularity of details embedded in a large overall visual dramaturgy that is layered and complex. In the transition from painting to moving sculpture, which is dance, the visual dimension remains decisive and maintains the spirit of a great and serious divertissement. Jonas&Lander compose a real horizon of unreality, bodily and musical, which aims to broaden perspectives on the possible interactions between bodies and machines by putting the audience in the position of having fun but at the same time experiencing a certain, profitable "discomfort," predominantly of an intellectual nature, resulting from the suggestions that the performance solicits. Humans and robots interact as equals, performing actions that push movement beyond the boundaries of human and nonhuman physiology and the specific qualities and abilities of each performer. The body, sounds and music are all generated, indistinctly, by the human sensibility and from the digital one, of the robot. Between the two "worlds" a con-fusion is deepening that speaks to us of the contemporary, but even more so, it speaks to us of the future. In this equal, subversive and revolutionary context, the organic overlaps and blends with the inorganic to the point that the skin is called upon to envelop and disguise, literally, the man-made machine. This game of dressing up the machine is inspired by the fantasy world and savoir faire of taxidermist Enrique Gomez de Molina, while the nakedness of the body, far from being taken for granted, can take on a full sociopolitical value in Slow and Wide. While the machine dresses itself in animal and human biology, to imitate and blend with it, the human body is stripped bare, more and more, observed and to times spied upon, certainly laid to bare by the technology that traces, evaluates, reveals and to times predicts its every movement. The show, observed as if it were an action device, functions as an orchestra of different elements, a body-music symphony where the body challenges biology as it dialogues and tries to to coexist with the machine. Whether experienced as a play, an apocalypse or a dystopian vision of the Garden of Eden, Slow and Wide seems to address to a moral dilemma concerning the future of humanity, committed today to integrate genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and biology as harmoniously as possible. The choreography seems to open a question: who are the real authors of the future, humans or machines? Who or what will determine the limits of the possible? What is the boundary beyond which control passes into the hands of the non-organic, the non-human? The answer, for now, we find on stage.

from a production point of view, Cascas d'Ovo (2013) is Jonas&Lander's debut show, the one that inaugurated their collaboration and quickly made them known to internationally (the show was selected by the European network of festivals, production houses and theaters Aerowaves Europe in 2014). From an artistic point of view, however, this first production highlighted the strong relationship the choreographic duo has with rhythm, which is considered a structural and dramaturgical element of choreography. The research expresses a specific interest in dialogue, understood first and foremost as a personal and creative performance that is expressed, here, in the form of a virtuosic exercise. At stake, or rather, in the choreographic play of Cascas d'Ovo is an impressive bodily expertise, which for different reasons than to Lento and Largo is positioned on the border between human, non-human and superhuman. Facing to blindfolded in a pose that evokes the painting The Lovers by Surrealist René Magritte, the choreographer-performers invite the audience to to follow two intertwined sequences, the sequence of movements and the sound sequence composed of the reciprocal drumming of hands on bodies. This is not just a body percussion duo, where the percussion of one on the body of the other acts from metronome, but an image in which a broader perspective can resonate, encompassing the dimension of relationship and, by extension, the social sphere. The blindness of the gaze means that "vision" is in all respects delegated to the body and its qualities.

The third performance on the program, Bate Fado, is the most recent and in some respects the one that marks a clear point of contact between Jonas&Lander's choreographic research and their country of origin, Portugal. This choreography, in fact, is among those artistic researches that resort to reenactment in their creative processes, and aims to revitalize a forgotten tradition, a dance that has disappeared over time, namely the fado dance, known today solely as a traditional musical genre. Bate Fado is thus a pièce of a hybrid nature, between dance performance and concert, and somewhat autobiographical as well as ensemble, the construction of which has also gone through archival research, particularly at the Bordalo Pinheiro Museum Archives where the choreographers have found traces of illustrations depicting fado dance scenes. This is an urban choreographic tradition that disappeared around World War I, of which there are no videos, testimonies or accurate descriptions that would allow, at least in part, its choreographic reconstruction. As is often the case in such cases, not just one but several types of fado dance existed over time, and then disappeared, forgotten. In the performance, Jonas&Lander refer specifically to fado batido, which is a form of fado characterized by the percussion of feet on the ground in dialogue with music, as is also the case in flamenco. In joining fado music, dance becomes the bearer of vitality, body and presence. Archival documents consulted by the choreographers hint at a bohemian atmosphere around to this dance, very colorful and vital, and it is possible to imagine fado evenings of the past in which, in addition to listening to music and singing, there was the possibility of contributing "sonically," through body and dance.

The choreographic poetics of Jonas&Lander, inhabited from a profound and accomplished sense of plurality, is drawing dramaturgical lines that know how to connect a surrealist figure with central themes of contemporaneity. Until to here, their repertoire speaks of imagery inhabited, gradually, from suggestions of a different nature, but always closely intertwined with musicality and rhythm. The choreographic imagery of this choreographic duo is broad, exuberant and courageous. Their portrayal of the human, while passing through irreverence, expresses expressive depth and punctuality in being able to intercept issues that, precisely through dance, can find space and insight. Dance is considered a space where genres, but also roles, natures and identities, can hybridize creating new resonances. Many different spaces are ready to accommodate their vision, between stage and different spaces. Audiences can approach the works of these artists trusting that contemporary dance, even when it gets into the complex issues of its own time, can not stop being deeply sophisticated and, at the same time, entertaining.