Stabat Mater work in progress

From Cuba to Reggio Emilia

At a time when we have to focus on the imminent present, we at the Fondazione Nazionale della Danza / Aterballetto are laying the groundwork for new horizons, new productions, a new future.

At a time when it is almost impossible to leave the own city, we have managed to achieve something incredible. Directly from the warm and colourful Cuba, between bureaucracy and Covid emergency, at the beginning of February the choreographer Norge Cedeño Raffo arrived in the spaces of our Fonderia to create Stabat Mater, a new production for three dancers, three singers and three musicians.

In the previous news we got to know this young Cuban artist a little bit, and he gave us his impressions of the first days of creation with the dancers of the company.

However, the question arises: how did we come in touch with Norge? Why did we want to entrust a young Cuban choreographer with this new production, co-produced with the Fondazione Arturo Toscanini?

The managing director Gigi Cristoforetti and the company director Sveva Berti tell us in this video: an artistic challenge with which the Fondazione Nazionale della Danza / Aterballetto, on the one hand, presents to the Italian and international scene an artist who is essentially unknown in Europe; on the other hand, for the first time it deals with the Cuban choreographic universe.

A visionary set

The choreography is based on Arvo Pärt’s Stabat Mater. The number 3 is one of the main elements in the composition of this piece of music, which also guided the choice to involve three dancers in the choreography.
On stage there are 3 bodies (Saul Daniele Ardillo, Martina Forioso, Serena Vinzio), 3 voices (soprano, contralto, tenore), 3 instruments (violin, viola, cello), which dialogue together highlighting the beauty of the piece and the melodic constructive wisdom.

This encounter among dancers, musicians and singers becomes coexistence in the same stage space, a magical appearance and disappearance of each of the different interpretative components. This is why the scenic concept, as well as the lighting design, has been entrusted to Fabiana Piccioli, an artist who has worked all over Europe with major opera and choreographic productions, as well as lighting designer of our Don Juan by Johan Inger.

She is in charge of the visual suggestion, based on the use of special painted dance carpets, capable of capturing and transforming the effect of the lights, and on the reuse of waste material in an upcycling perspective.

In this video Fabiana gives us the suggestions that inspired her scenic concept.

A docufilm with RAI5

This new creation is a surprising and courageous adventure in many ways, not only from a choreographic and musical point of view. Multidirectional exchanges of different theatrical languages, and a search for points of contact between European and Cuban culture.
Inspiring elements that have stimulated Rai5 to make a docufilm to tell from close up the artistic and human experience of a young talented choreographer, for the first time in Italy, and to show the creative process of an ambitious and unusual new production, in the setting of the Teatro Asioli in Correggio, a small Italian-style theatre immersed in the Po Valley, one of the most fascinating and suggestive.

The shooting of the docufilm, under the direction of Alessandro D’Onghia, started on 29th January 2021 (the first day of work of the choreographer with the three dancers) and ended on 6th March 2021 at the Teatro Asioli in Correggio. The broadcast of the docufilm on Rai5 is scheduled for spring 2021.

A docufilm that for the Fondazione Nazionale della Danza / Aterballetto is a further step towards the realisation of works in which all languages blend harmoniously, and all audiences can recognise themselves.

MEDIA PARTNER OF DOCUFILM

Stabat Mater is a research, co-design and co-production project shared by the Fondazione Nazionale della Danza/Aterballetto and the Fondazione Arturo Toscanini. Other co-production partners are the Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio Emilia and the Festspiele Ludwigshafen. Three musicians and three singers from the Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali “Achille Peri – Claudio Merulo” in Reggio Emilia, led by Maestro Marco Fiorini, were involved in the filming of the docufilm at the Teatro Asioli in Correggio. For the world premiere in Ludwigshafen in the 2022/2023 season, musicians and singers will be from the Fondazione Arturo Toscanini.

Awaiting the docufilm on Rai5, here is our work in progress Stabat Mater: