Antonella Bertoni creates the choreography Terra Piccola, made for Emiliana Campo and Matilde Di Ciolo, dancers of CCN/Aterballetto.

Where are we?

It is usually the first question I ask myself when I compose: space is decisive.

Here, its reduction becomes a metaphor for a present that, in seeming permanent, thins the horizon and narrows boundaries. Within the brevity of MicroDanza and its confined space, the primary meaning of the action lies in the moving bodies of Emiliana and Matilde: nothing more—and the whole multitude of it.

A body worked by the earth dialogues with distances, fiercely in trance and through abrupt stops; it releases, trembles, asks, strikes, turns, escapes and laughs, jumps and flies. A compressed dance, enclosed within a geographic (and cultural) enclosure, looking toward the future in search of what remains human in us.

It is small land, today.

Thanks to Emiliana Campo and Matilde Di Ciolo for making space for me; who is the model, who the copy? Two profoundly different yet identical souls here, reconciled in presence and in the wisdom of their bodies—of aching wisdom and beauty.

Antonella Bertoni

Antonella Bertoni, choreographer

Antonella Bertoni is a dancer and choreographer who has been a leading figure on the Italian scene since the 1990s. She trained in Rome and, in 1987, moved to Paris, where she worked with Carolyn Carlson and met Michele Abbondanza, with whom she began a long-standing artistic partnership.

In 1995 they founded the Compagnia Abbondanza/Bertoni, now considered one of the most prolific and widely recognized companies in Italian dance. As a guest choreographer, she created Figli d’Adamo (2000) for Aterballetto and Addio Addio (2011) and Cerimoniale (2012) for the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.

She appeared in the film Io ballo da sola (1995) by Bernardo Bertolucci and was among the protagonists of the television choreographies for Vieni via con me (2010) by Fabio Fazio and Roberto Saviano. She also starred in Abbondanza Bertoni – Un film ballato, produced by RaiCultura and directed by Felice Cappa (2015).

She has created and performed in more than thirty works, ranging from the solo Try to the project Ho male all’altro—a trilogy on Greek tragedy—to La densità dell’umano and the Biologico cycle, which explores bodies and identities in relation, as in Le fumatrici di pecore, Il groppo, and Scena Madre, where she appears on stage alongside her eighty-year-old mother. She also collaborates on the creations of Michele Abbondanza, including I dream, Gli orbi, and numerous titles such as La morte e la fanciulla, Erectus, Pelléas et Mélisande, Balli Plastici Remix, Clown Time, and Hyenas.

Among the awards she has received are the Danza&Danza Award in 1996 as Best Performer, the ETI–Stregagatto Award 1997/98, and the Danza&Danza Award in 2017 for Best Italian Production (La morte e la fanciulla).