Florence Dance Festival 2024

Santa Maria Novella, Florence
July 18-23, 2024

The 35th edition of the Florence Dance Festival run by the founders, Marga Nativo (a former prima ballerina) and Keith Ferrone, which opened on June 20, featured an extraordinarily wide-ranging programme of work by national and international companies, all in the highly atmospheric Grand Cloister of the Santa Maria Novella, a stunning space surrounded by Renaissance frescos and cypresses.

I was present on three evenings in the festival’s final week, starting on July 18 and Reggio Emilia-based ensemble, MM Contemporary Dance Company. The beautiful dancers were simply sublime as they performed Duo d’Eden and Grosse Fugue by Maguy Marin and Elegia by Enrico Morelli.

Marin’s Duo d’Eden is a magnificent, enchanting duet. Two slim bodies in stretchy, skinny and semi-transparent costumes, seemingly naked, embody the primordial dynamics between Adam and Eve. As if going through a transformation, from otherworldly to terrestrial, they beautifully merge with one another. Highly sensual and nuanced, and with sexual connotations, it unfolds as a delicate and tender coming together of two bodies in love.

MM Contemporary Dance Comapny
in Duo d’Eden by Maguy Marin
Photo Riccardo Panozzo

Highly complex entangled suspensions saw Emiliana Campo wrapped around Nicola Stasi’s torso, hips, then on his shoulders and at times in his arms. The fluid and complex intersections seem to have no end. As a discovery, a game, a confrontation, a physical dialogue, it was mesmerising and poetic, often recalling Bernini’s sculptures, albeit here in constant movement.

Grosse Fugue is a crescendo of hectic craze, a rhapsody of feminine force. It is a portrayal of the stratified sensations of women, of their internal universe, their immense strength and their capacity to react with stamina, determination and intuition. It is a catharsis and an empowerment, a mental and physical effort that shows the fierce force intricate to female nature.

Campo, Matilde Gherardi, Fabiana Lonardo and Alice Ruspaggiari cross the stage full flow and as if going through storms of emotions. Strongly charged with fabulous dynamism, it was difficult to follow all the quick movement that unravels ceaselessly. The dancers throw themselves on the stage only to immediately stand up again; then jump, fall again, turn and cross. At times it was reminiscent of Merce Cunningham, at others of Lucinda Childs.

Morelli’s Elegia is a beautiful union of dance and poetry, harmoniously well balanced. It has as strong community connotation. Danced by the whole company, it suggests a generosity and deep bond between the members of the group. The eight sensational dancers fully inhabit the stage with great charisma and presence. The choreography expresses human dynamics, but everyone with their specific body and personal way of moving.

MM Contemporary Dance Company in Elegia by Enrico Morelli
Photo courtesy Florence Dance Festival

The poetry of Mariangela Gualtieri, recited by the warm and melancholic voice of Isidora Balberini, becomes the fil rouge or guiding idea from which the body narration finds its context. Elegia is about the desire to be held, listened to, seen and loved, and to surrender to beloved ones with trust and affection. The physical interpretation of the text is wonderful, the narrating bodies strongly and clearly speaking in motion what the words express.

On July 20, Boston Dance Theater presented a triple bill, opening with If as If, choreographed by Itzik Galili to music by Grammy Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, Aaron Jay Kernis. The work is based on the research of solace and the refusal that often derives from it.

The interaction between Henoch Spinola and Jessie Jeanne Stinnett is solid, sturdy, grounded. One asks for comfort, the other grants it, only to then detach. Although Galili created the work as a response to his Exile Within, it is perhaps more a continuation of it. Themes such as desire, tenderness and doubt are showcased in the interaction between two dancers who connect and abandon each other in a constant push and pull interplay.

Boston Dance Theater in Suck It Up
by Amadi “Baye” Washington and Sam “Asa” Pratt
Photo courtesy Florence Dance Festival

Internalized perceptions of deficiency among males have created a culture of resentment, while commercial images promise status, offer solutions to inadequacy, and breed entitlement, believe independent choreographer-dancers Amadi “Baye” Washington and Sam “Asa” Pratt. In Suck It Up, also performed by them, they tackle the pressure felt by men in the USA to be stronger, more empowered and thus more attractive.

With no little subtle irony, the work tackles disquieting issues which are very present and alarming. What does it imply to be and feel man today? How can men show virility? How should a real man be at the present? The work shows how some American men, attempting to resolve these questions, become victims of false, insane beliefs and fake, odd identities. Suck It Up presents a tragic-comical and political message about an initially American phenomenon but one that is slowly reaching the rest of the western world and beyond.

Delicate Blue, choreographed by Alessandro Sousa Pereira, is inspired by the literature of Brazilian author Clarice Lispector, noted for works that depict a highly personal, introspective, almost existentialist view of the human dilemma.

Boston Dance Theater in Delicate Blue by Alessandro Sousa Pereira
Photo courtesy Florence Dance Festival

Pereira guides the dancers to embody the multiple characters, or better personalities, which are present in everyone. The choreography deals with questions related to identities and their alterity. Diversity meets acceptance as the dancers rely on one another. The physical dance often reflects the movement of birds. Green costumes and shiny beaks recall a school of parrots. It was fascinating to follow the changing dynamic of the performance which, with its rich and well performed vocabulary of gestures and embodied feelings, created an absorbing scenario where the mind looks at beautiful dancers and often sees other such fascinating and mysterious creatures.

The honour of closing the festival on July 23 fell to Australian company, Lewis Major Projects.

Two x Three by Russell Maliphant, here rearranged by Major, is famously known its geometrical and linear choreography, and use of lights and shade. It reminded me of some of pioneer photographer Edward Muybridge’s photographic sequences of movement. The play of light and dark emphasised the skilful dance of Clementine Benson, Elsi Faulks and Stefaan Morrow, transforming it, for me at least, into a transfixing tri-dimensional film that I could have kept watching for a long time.

Mort Cygne, Major’s own version of Dying Swan, originally created by Michel Fokine on Anna Pavlova in 1905, was danced by the winsome Benson. Dressed in a white leotard showing her muscular back, she danced marvellously. Her delicate movement perfectly embodied a dying swan. Together with her pensive expression, it was engaging and captivating. An exquisite execution and reinterpretation of an old masterpiece that moves and enthrals.

Lament by Lewis Major
Photo courtesy Florence Dance Festival

When aged just nine, the Italian literary genius Dante was reportedly immediately smitten by then eight-year-old Bice di Folco Portinari (Beatrice) while at a party. This apparently unidirectional love accompanied him all his life despite her death at age twenty-four. Following the tragic event the author wrote thirty-one poetries dedicated to her. Swayed by the impressive story, Major created Lament, a piece where the interaction of dancers Faulks and Morrow appears in juxtaposition with Dante’s spiritual love.

The work presents a physical entanglement based on a repetition of lifts and suspensions where Morrow keeps Faulks in the air with a challenging and demanding, winding forcefulness. The flexible strength of the intricate choreography resonates with the durability, resilience and endurance that some loves are made of, Dante’s for Beatrice in particular.

Epilogue by Lewis Major
Photo courtesy Florence Dance Festival

Finally, Epilogue shone as an hypnotic dance, again performed by the enchanting Benson, who appears as a god who happens to be on earth only to bring a message to the deluded mortals. The work is a message, or a reminder, about the transitory nature of beauty, the role it has played in shaping Western art, and the state of impermanence that is integral to life. Benson’s dazzling performance left everyone in the chiostro amazed and delighted. It left wonderful traces in the memory, as with the other works, those who witnessed it remarking once again on the beauty, significance and eloquence that dance as art has.

Having opened on June 20 with Peeping Tom’s Diptych – The Missing Door & The Lost Room, other foreign ensembles performing at the five-week festival were Oona Doherty’s OD Works (UK) and Compagnie Linga (Switzerland). From Italy, the programme included Mystes Dance Company; FloDance2.0, in a dance version of Puccini’s Bohème; and Kinesis CDC (Italy), who also paired with Taipei’s pre-professional Zhong Zheng Senior High School (中正高中) in a Style and Culture in Dance evening; plus multi-company platforms.