1. Inhabiting the choreographic space

Dance becomes architecture as it continuously conceives, erects and designs places within places
Marco Valerio Amico

This paper is part of the research themes on the design of the scenic space, in cases where the ‘abstract’ creation, devoid of textual references, does not develop into a story but into an introspective path, through the characters of a space rarefied that does not seek comfort in the place, rather it resorts to a white box, avoiding the conditioning deriving from the site specific.

The evidence of the creative process is a goal born as a response to the widespread mannerism that derives from the creation of personal languages built by companies in favor of performance, a fold that leaves no time for personal research. The public is less and less directed towards «theatrical languages», so contemporary dance gets back into play, revises its own rules in a strenuous attempt to find «its roots in different territories», looking outside itself, «transforming experiences into matter».[1]

The need for a studio that folds back on itself, for a scenic space reduced to a ‘map’ which, remaining visible even after production has taken place, makes the reference that conditioned the choreographic elaboration readable to the spectator, brings us back to the artistic conditions in which the process replaces the result: showing the creative elaboration is more important than the performance.

Rudolf Arnheim maintains that «the experience of architecture is linked to our physical existence and to the movement of the body in space».[2] Architects like choreographers share the same interest in space; both try to define it by observing and planning the movement of the bodies that inhabit it. The term ‘living’ in architecture alludes to the bond between man and place: it takes on the meaning of “taming space”, making it welcoming again, defining it and making it understandable and manageable; man modifies the structuring characteristics of space through his own interpretative schemes, building and affirming, in interaction, a mutual belonging, the result of accumulation over time.[3]

The etymology of ‘space’ alludes to a place ‘available’ for objects and bodies, identified by a placement or position in it, endowed with dimensions and susceptible to movement. It is precisely movement that determines living in architecture; the daily retracing of the trajectories determines flows that outline a map of habitability: a codifiable program of repeated movements, a memory of positions, which verify the compatibility of the space with the uses for which it was designed. In architecture, the inhabitant is an integral part of the project: he is the one who determines the space with his own idea/need, who measures it with his own body, who tests it, confirming its appropriateness. His permanence in the place, the repetition of steps, pauses and movements introduces the temporal dimension, which restores experience to those who define the space by inhabiting it and to those who observe it.

Even in scenography – similarly to interior design – the space, identified on a small scale with reversibility features, will be inhabited temporarily to allow for stage changes and the movements of the actors; in a portion of the stage, flexible and passable, the theatrical actions will be concentrated, reinterpreting the places in a dramaturgical key.

In the choreographic composition, the scenic space is defined in a virtual way: it is the place derived from the score of the movements that provides the spectator with his reading coordinates. The choreographic space is defined by a system of paths that the dancer undertakes and respects to verify the ‘evidence’ of the work and, in the planning phase, its limits, escapes and creative accidents. A choreography can be read as an excavation, an imprint left by movement in space, imagined as a flexible material, like a volume shaped by movement. Starting from his own individuality, the performer elaborates a stereometry of this space, a measurement which is a synthesis between experience, tension and three-dimensional geometric space, but also an extreme expression of the potential of the body against nature.

The reading developed below is far from the areas of dance and art criticism; uses spatial categories typical of architecture aimed at interpreting the scenic space as a ‘space of movement’, establishing the relationships that actions manage to weave between each other and with the environment that hosts them, tracing a place with points, lines and directions it dissolves in the instant after it is created.

Alphabet: Resa - ph. © Margherita Masè - Dancer: Carolina Amoretti

Alphabet - © margherita masè - Dancer: Carolina Amoretti

2. Interpreting the 'space of movement'

Alphabet was born during a period of pause for nanou, from the group's need to reflect on itself, to re-establish its own grammar in dance terms, retracing what has already been done and distilling its essence, following a process of de-verbalization and absence of spectacular artifices to devote himself to the body, and to the reinvention of its role, as the engine of an abstract composition.[4] The monographic meetings, which punctuate the cycle of residential stages, constitute the 'chapters' of Alphabet, an articulated work of analytical excavation that investigates the prodromes of nanou's research, allowing a choreography to be written with the sole purpose of breaking it down . This approach recognizes the adoption of systemic logic as adopted in the technological field, [5] to allow reading and outlining the possibility of modifying products and processes, recognizing their components.

After ten years, the evolution of poetic research led the group to abandon the narrative dimension present in the first theatrical works, where the action was aimed at a story in which the spectator was "accompanied in a frontal, spatially and temporally defined vision" , with the presence of 'characters' who returned from work to work with different characteristics, showing in a nutshell in each show the signs of the following one,[6] and with the help of deeply explicit props that almost transcend their conventional function (Motel-Prima stanza, 2008).

Of the references to the visual arts - including cinema, photography, painting - clearly present in the early works, only traces can be found today; there is a tendency to remember them and to enhance the incidence of memories sedimented in the dynamics of the body, giving complexity to the composition, moving away from "a recognizable access code".[7] As in the expressive custom of contemporary dance, in the scores the bodies use different languages by implementing a contamination of genres;[8] it is possible to identify steps and figures inherited from classical dance and also continuous references to the athletic practices of artistic gymnastics, often present in nanou's works, in a regime of apparent spontaneity; the score unfolds in constant adherence to the ground, the barefoot dancers experiment with new expressive possibilities, between body balances and continuous transgressions of possible physical limits, in a succession of leaps, falls and rapid lifting.

In particular, this process, which can be defined as dance transmission, uses «an open design» with which the bodies are shaped in an «in-the-making discourse», which changes according to the inclinations and variations of whoever 'carries' the dance.[9] Privileging stratification and progression, fixed boundaries are overcome, balances are sought, performative landscapes are designed in which aleatory choreographies are built with the random movement of small pre-established choreographic blocks.[10]

The chapters that structure Alphabet: System, Resa, Relation, Lexicon, with a ductile and flexible format for places, attempt the systematization of a compositional practice by rationalizing the elements of the system. Authorial nature[11] of work cannot escape the individuality of its components and their relationships.[12] The experimentation is conducted between improvisation and rigour, deconstructing a poetic discourse; the connection between the parts dedicated to the different elements takes place in a constant rejection of crystallized figures, in the renunciation of the text and of the 'narrative' scenography; the scene is geometric, architectural, even if detached from the place. It is articulated horizontally by straight lines and figures: a 'map'[13] with different possibilities of interpretation and use which, left to be discovered as a single horizontal scenic element with very few indications, determines the fusion of the dynamic elements in new endings and declinations, with a continuous innovation of the lexicon. This 'zero degree' architecture, from which the performer derives that system of constraints necessary for the creative act to avoid a structureless sum of gestures, if left visible once the creative process is finished, generates for the spectator a means of approaching scenic reading . The map is the scene and the graphic reference sign that conditions the choreographic elaboration: projections of the body in infinite directions are possible that materialize the contours of 'ideal volumes'. A scenic writing of movements is defined, performed on a mix of improvisations, corrections and creative variations which, arranged each time in dedicated spatial elements, trace an ongoing plot that links the warp of the 'paths'. These traces, received as a memory by the dancer, are also memorized by the spectator, who outlines the outlines of a scene that welcomes the movement.

alphabet - © margherita masè - Dancers: Carlotta Fanelli, Eloise Listuzzi, Jane Llaha

3. Logbook of a creative process

gruppo nanou begins its Sicilian week of the Alphabet tour, a writing project for a possible dance – alternating between Viagrande Studios and Scenario Pubblico [14] – proposing moments of dialogue, reflection and deepening of one's choreographic research, in the context of a workshop/meeting in which the interaction between the group, amateurs and dancers leads to a work in progress with an explicit title: System.[15] This mix makes the atmosphere of the working days extremely lively, giving life to a series of exchanges, of chain reactions, in which the dance activity is enriched, and the participants discover, in the interaction with the company, some of the tools necessary to decode the group's multi-year research. The experimental verification of the writing process reveals a constantly evolving language, followed from its birth to the performative synthesis; through moments of collective participation in a learning on the stage, the observers autonomously appropriate the methodology. This product arises every time from the overlapping and harmonic synthesis of individual projects and 'poetic reaction accidents' – quoting Le Corbusier, to refer again to architecture -, what Marco Valerio Amico calls «creative accidents». These unexpected benefits are caused by the coaction of different 'engines' and by the changes brought about on the bodies by synergistic frictions. The goal is not a drawing, a score based on a succession of figures, but the continuous pursuit of balances, alternating with new and unknown imbalances. The experimentation is then enriched with new elements: the concepts of 'space' and 'time' are introduced. Space is the place defined and measured by the bodies of the dancers who, assuming positions of ease or discomfort, modify it with their action, building architectures of which they are an integral part. Two types of space have been identified: «mobile» and «architectural»; it is necessary to feed on both. In the first a chain process takes place: «the action modifies the space and the space modifies the action which, in order to adhere to the new space created, modifies itself and by modifying itself it modifies the space again which, being modified, proposes a new change to action. It's a seamless effect."[16] The second refers to the organization of a landscape in which the action unfolds: therefore to the map and the shape that the space assumes, making the choreographic device legible.

In fact, right from the beginning of the workshop, space manifests itself in the resources offered by the pre-established 'map': a geometric design on the horizontal plane of the scenic space, made up of lines that intersect to form triangular and trapezoidal spaces, closed and open areas that they assume the role of creative areas; a project of 'trajectories' that define the field of action of defined, initially independent 'characters'. It is a 'matrix-territory' that harnesses the scenic writing within some pre-established rules, providing the system with a palimpsest, which could be defined as a structure, or rather a «set of relationships applied to a set of entities or components».[17] The nature of this structure follows the principles that support the notion of system: an "autonomous entity of internal dependencies, in a whole formed by integral elements, such that each depends on the others and cannot be what it is except by virtue of his relationship with others.[18]

The 'system of rules' is profoundly modified by the 'system of differences': two bodies with different structures pursuing an individual action project, keep the principle of movement unchanged until they meet ('hook'). The algorithms that regulate the action of the individual bodies ('projects') become legible in fits and starts, alternating with a single, indissoluble and continuously regenerated algorithm. The identity that each 'character' manifests, in the personal temporal composition, always remains present, but is partially modified in the 'connection' with the others, with a collective sharing of one's own project; this, macroscopically, manifests itself with the shift of trajectory, but also of rhythm, tempo and volume. There are 'accelerations, imbalances, physical vibrations, tensions, rearrangements, connections, new alliances, loss of synchrony, expansions, territorialisations'. This is the terminology of Alphabet which defines the system of signs and the dynamics of repetition.

The single writing undergoes a choral re-writing that modifies the composition. Space is perceived intermittently, materialized in the fractions of a second in which the gesture – the use of the limbs – 'occupies', 'embraces' and 'moves' the spatial boundaries, determining 'new suburbs' and managing 'new territories' . The occupation of space is amplified in the movement transmitted to the others in a common project; from a simple drawing complex projections are created that place paths, fix virtual points, make space concrete. The choral project opens up and shows its 'support structure' with lucidity, restoring meaning to the 'symbiotic system' of mutually dependent parts, which «push to change the relational modalities, to create new relationships and modalities of interaction», putting discussion of consolidated equipment.[19] The attentive public implements a proxemic reading, appropriating the system of rules, getting used to grasping the interferences between bodies as opportunities for contamination, conquests of bodily potential.

The whole project revolves around the fundamental concept of memory, as intense as the memory of the body. The mnemonic traces of some preparatory exercises - carried out in two or three people - which experiment with the possibilities of movement during the lifting, dragging and rolling of a non-reactive body, leave marks on the bodies. These memories form the basis for the dynamic solutions to be adopted. On memories, situations are multiplied and repeated, recorded and metabolized on one's own body. The latter, enriched with a new awareness, manages to identify the 'points of dominance': an 'above' and a 'below', an architecture of the body with 'low' and 'high' sections, where the 'engine' it is from time to time determined and modified by 'centres', 'axes', 'peripheries'. A further terminology that increases the lexicon of Alphabet.

The sound carpet on which everything moves finally determines further synchronies, adjustments, punctuations with more or less marked pauses. The geometric figures of the starting scenic space modify and extend in an elastic way, gaining changes in dimension to the gesture.

Bibliography

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F. Espuelas, Il vuoto. Riflessioni sullo spazio in architettura, Milano, Marinotti, 2004, ed. it.

L. Mango, La scrittura scenica: un codice e le sue pratiche nel teatro del Novecento, Roma, Bulzoni, 2003.

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1 M.V. Amico, ‘Manifesto per una danza possibile’, Artribune, [accessed 04.02.2019].
2 R. Arnheim, Arte e percezione visiva, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1962, ed. it. [1954].
3 Cfr. G. Nardi, ‘Costruire per abitare il nostro tempo. La dimensione temporale come elemento costitutivo del progetto’, in Id., Percorsi di un pensiero progettuale, Milano, CLUP, 2003, p. 227.
4 Il corpo inteso quale ‘centro irradiante della scrittura coreografica’. Cfr. F. Acca, ‘Scena anfibia e nuova danza’, in AA.VV., Ivrea cinquanta. Mezzo secolo di nuovo teatro in Italia, 1967-2017, Genova, AkropolisLibri, 2018, p. 183.
5 Tecnologia come scienza che indaga e governa i processi produttivi.
6 L. Donati, ‘Al lato della rappresentazione. I paesaggi performativi di gruppo nanou’, Arabeschi, n. 6, luglio-dicembre 2015, p. 15.
7 Cfr. Marco Valerio Amico e Rhuena Brecci, in L. Donati, ‘Al lato della rappresentazione. I paesaggi performativi di gruppo nanou’.
8 A. Pontremoli, La danza. Storia, teoria, estetica nel Novecento, Bari, Laterza, 2004, p. 102.
9 L. Donati, J. Malvezzi, ‘Videointervista a gruppo nanou’, Arabeschi, n. 6, luglio-dicembre 2015, p. 27.
10 Cfr. voce ‘coreografia’ in Enciclopedia dello spettacolo, Milano, Garzanti, 1976.
11 On the concept of authorship: «The contemporary choreographer defines himself as such starting from his own individuality as author. In this sense, the term contemporary dance does not refer to a single stylistic characterization or to the use of one or more body techniques, but rather to a tendency to use different body languages, in constant dialogue with other forms of artistic expression, to communicate one's own vision of the world", cf. A. D’Adamo, ‘Spazio alla danza’, in Id. (a cura di), Spazi per la danza contemporanea, Roma, Editoria & Spettacolo, 2009, p. 23.
12 «Nanou non può sopperire alle mancanze di nessuna delle sue parti […] Cambiando un addendo muterà il risultato» asserisce Marco Valerio Amico. Cfr. F. Acca, J. Lanteri (curated by), Cantieri Extralarge. Quindici anni di danza d’autore, 1995-2010, Roma, Editoria & Spettacolo, 2011, p. 89.
13 The 'map' is a legacy of the first show Namoro (2005), where the theatrical work was based on the characters of the map designed by Ferdinando Pessoa in Lettere alla fiancée (Milano, Adelphi, 1988, XII, ed. it.).
14 Laboratorio/workshop 24-25 novembre 2018, Viagrande Sudios, Centro di ricerca, Formazione e Produzione per le arti performative (Viagrande, CT); residenza/performance, 26 novembre-2 dicembre 2018, Scenario Pubblico/Compagnia Zappalà Danza, Centro Nazionale di Produzione della Danza, Catania.
15 Sistema, performance con Marco Valerio Amico, Carolina Amoretti, Sissj Bassani, Scenario Pubblico, 1-2 dicembre 2018.
16 M. V. Amico, ‘Manifesto per una danza possibile’.
17 Cfr. U. Eco, La struttura assente. La ricerca semiotica e il metodo strutturale, Milano, Bompiani, 1968.
18 G. Ciribini, Tecnologia e progetto, Torino, Celid, 1984. The systemic approach, adopted in the field of Architectural Technology to govern the design process, also allows the modification of the system with the introduction of new elements, constantly returning control of the compatibility of the integration, constituting a basis for a updated, controllable and modifiable work in progress, able to make the complexity of the project accessible.
19 Definibili ‘processi creativi superiori’; cfr. M, Zeleny, ‘La gestione a tecnologia superiore e la gestione della tecnologia superiore’, in G. Bocchi, M. Ceruti (a cura di), La sfida della complessità, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1985, pp. 378-413.