Maguy Marin’s dance arrives at Fonderia through the interpretation of the MM Contemporary Dance Company.
Directed by Michela Merola, the company presents for Danza in Fonderia two masterpieces by the multi-award-winning French choreographer Maguy Marin: Duo d’Eden, a duet of rare, almost mythical beauty, and the all-female quartet Grosse Fugue, Marin’s personal interpretation of Ludwig van Beethoven’s work, considered a milestone in the relationship between classical music and contemporary dance. After the performance, a short talk with a dance critic is scheduled.
The MM Contemporary Dance Company won the 2024 Danza&Danza Award for Repertoire Enhancement with Maguy Marin’s Grosse Fugue.
https://vimeo.com/480791125/2e8682f7fb
Choreography and Soundtrack: Maguy Marin
Restaged by: Cathy Polo and Ennio Sammarco
Costumes: Montserrat Casanova
Lighting: Alexandre Béneteaud
Rehearsal Director: Enrico Morelli
Performers: Mario Genovese, Fabiana LonardoDuration: 18 minutes
Production: MM Contemporary Dance Company
Co-production: Fondazione I Teatri di Reggio EmiliaWorld Premiere – Compagnie Maguy Marin: December 12, 1986 – Angers
First Performance with MM Contemporary Dance Company: October 21, 2020 – Teatro Sociale di Trento
“Two bodies, as if naked, advance on stage, entwining with one another and never letting go. A man and a woman, their bodies drawn together and clinging, joined until they become inseparable. She, a vine that wraps and coils. He, who holds her, restrains her, supports her. There is something mythical in their dance, in this total fusion of two beings who become one, never to part again.
Eden is original love, love of the time of innocence. There is also something raw and primitive in this duet. The soundscape of waterfalls and storms accompanies the dance.
Eden is a dance full of strength and beauty, perhaps because of the natural force that emanates from the purity of movement and the precision of gesture, from the almost sculptural forms, from the power of the bodies. That is where the emotion arises—from this simplicity that reveals the essential. If love is a dance, it is surely Eden.”
Yasmine Tigoe
In Duo d’Eden, two dancers of MMCDC perform with mastery and style a work of rare beauty—original, complex, and demanding—created in 1986 by Maguy Marin for her company. Simply a man and a woman: flesh-colored unitards highlighting their nudity, a long wig for her, entwined with each other throughout the piece as she continuously evolves across his body. An Adam and Eve immersed in a journey of sensuality, eros, defense, and attack, within a world that is anything but calm, safe, and idyllic. A poetic and intense work.
Choreography: Maguy Marin
Restaged by: Dorothée Delabie
Music: Ludwig van Beethoven, Die Grosse Fuge, Op. 133
Costumes: Chantal Cloupet
Lighting: François Renard
Rehearsal Director: Enrico Morelli
Performers: Fabiana Lonardo, Giorgia Raffetto, Alice Ruspaggiari, Diletta Savini
Duration: 20 minutes
Production: MM Contemporary Dance Company
Co-production: Reggio Parma Festival, Festival Bolzano Danza / Fondazione Haydn di Bolzano e Trento, MilanOltre Festival
World Premiere – Compagnie Maguy Marin: 2001 – Espace Jean Poperen, Meyzieu
National Preview with MM Contemporary Dance Company: December 16, 2023 – Reggio Parma Festival – Teatro Ariosto, Reggio Emilia
National Premiere with MM Contemporary Dance Company: July 16, 2024 – Festival Bolzano Danza
Four women and an extraordinary musical work such as Die Grosse Fuge: Maguy Marin’s personal reading of Ludwig van Beethoven’s masterpiece—considered a milestone in the relationship between classical music and contemporary dance—is built on a constant, intimate dialogue between dance and music, on a profound connection between the two arts.
Created in 2001 for the C.ie Maguy Marin, it is revived here in the interpretation of four dancers from the MM Contemporary Dance Company. From the encounter between these four women and the music emerges a complexity between the growing vital force of the feminine and the state of exhilaration and despair of this score.
The dance becomes an euphoric explosion of energy, where the four performers, dressed in red, in an almost frenetic alternation, leap, run, collapse, and rise again in a whirlwind of life and frenzy. A metaphor of life that turns into a vortex, an exhilarating race against death, where the very vertigo of the end drives us to run breathlessly, to live every moment as if it were the last. A powerful, moving work, a moment of pure emotion.
The MM Contemporary Dance Company is a contemporary dance ensemble directed by choreographer Michele Merola. Founded in 1999, it was conceived both as a production center for events and performances and as a promoter of festivals and workshops, with the aim of fostering exchanges and collaborations between Italian and international artists as witnesses and spokespeople of contemporary culture.
Based in Reggio Emilia, the company’s repertoire is rich and diverse, thanks to the works of Michele Merola and creations by leading European and Italian choreographers such as Maguy Marin, Mats Ek, Mauro Bigonzetti, Thomas Noone, Gustavo Ramírez Sansano, Karl Alfred Schreiner, Silvia Gribaudi, Eugenio Scigliano, Emanuele Soavi, Enrico Morelli, Daniele Ninarello, Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi, Roberto Tedesco, Camilla Monga, and Adriano Bolognino.
In 2010, MM Contemporary Dance Company won the prestigious Danza&Danza Award as Best Emerging Company and has since become a recognized excellence of Italian dance, with an established presence across the national stage. In recent years, it has also gained international acclaim, performing in both European and non-European countries (Korea, Colombia, Canada, Germany, Russia, Morocco, Belgium, Spain, Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Sweden, France, Finland, Serbia, Norway, Croatia).
In 2017, the company won the Europaindanza Award for Choreographic Merit with Michele Merola’s Bolero. In 2022, MMCDC received the Danza&Danza Award for Best Italian Production with Ballade (choreography by Mauro Bigonzetti and Enrico Morelli). In 2024, it was awarded the Danza&Danza Prize for Repertoire Enhancement for Maguy Marin’s Grosse Fugue.
In 2021, 2022, and 2024, MMCDC appeared on RAI 1 in Roberto Bolle’s TV programs Danza con me and Viva la danza, performing works by Mauro Bigonzetti and Lorca Massine. For the 2018–2020 and 2022–2024 triennia, as well as in 2021, the company was an associate ensemble of the InDanza Circuit of Trentino-Alto Adige.
MM Contemporary Dance Company is supported by the Italian Ministry of Culture, the Emilia-Romagna Region, the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, and the Centro Permanente Danza Danza / Reggio Emilia.
Maguy Marin was born in Toulouse in 1951. After her dance studies, in 1972 she joined Mudra, the school and choreographic residence created by Maurice Béjart in Brussels, where she took part in the formation of the group Chandra, which gathered the school’s talents under the direction of Micha van Hoecke. From 1974 to 1977 she was a full member of Les Ballets du XXe Siècle, directed by Béjart, where she not only performed repertoire works and new creations, but also choreographed Yu-Ku-Ri (1976).
In 1984, she founded the Compagnie Maguy Marin. After residencies at the Centre Chorégraphique National de Créteil, the Centre Chorégraphique National de Rillieux-la-Pape (Lyon), and later in Toulouse, in 2015 the company settled in Ramdam, in the Lyon region, a space dedicated to artistic creation, to develop an ambitious project: Ramdam, a center for the arts.
Maguy Marin is one of the leading figures of the “new French dance” and has created many works that have become renowned, including Babel Babel (1976), Cendrillon (1985), Coups d’État (1988), Made in France (1992), Aujourd’hui peut-être (1996), Quoi qu’il en soit (1999), Pièces détachées (2002), Umwelt (2004), Turba (2007), Salves (2010). Yet it is May B (1981), inspired by the literary world of Samuel Beckett, that remains a true masterpiece, still performed today in France and worldwide.
In addition to creating all the works for her own company, she has also choreographed for major companies such as Dutch National Ballet, Nederlands Dans Theater 3, Paris Opera, and Lyon Opera Ballet.
Alongside numerous honors received in her home country—including being named Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1998—she is among the few non-Americans to have been awarded the American Dance Festival Award (2003) and, in 2008, the Bessie Award in New York for Umwelt. In 2016, she received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale Danza.
Overall, Maguy Marin’s creative production could be gathered under the title “the human condition”: from May B to her most recent works, she has brought to life characters that reveal the grotesque soul, intrinsically tied to the essence of humanity. The result is powerful, ironic, and at times fierce.
TICKETS
Full price: €10
Reduced: €6 (under 30, dance schools, Liceo Coreutico Matilde di Canossa, over 65, CRAL members of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia)
Reduced: €3 (under 8)
TICKET PURCHASE
ONLINE: https://www.biglietteriafonderia39.it/home.aspx
Fonderia Box Office: opens one hour before the performance (via della Costituzione 39, Reggio Emilia).
Tickets are unreserved (general admission).
CONTACTS FOR RESERVATIONS
Phone & WhatsApp: +39 334 1023554
Email: biglietteria@aterballetto.it
