The new work by the Ravenna-based company — between body, space, and cinematic language — premieres at Ravenna Festival, in the spaces of the Mercato Coperto, …
The new work by the Ravenna-based company — between body, space, and cinematic language — premieres at Ravenna Festival, in the spaces of the Mercato Coperto, from June 1 to 7. “The film lives in the collective consciousness; we try to capture its atmosphere.”

Following the acclaimed redrum (2024), for which they won the Premio Ubu for Best Dance Performance, Rhuena Bracci and Marco Valerio Amico — gruppo nanou — return to Ravenna Festival from June 1 to 7 (excluding June 3 and 4) with goldroom, performed at the Mercato Coperto. The work is part of Overlook Hotel, a multi-year choreographic project through which gruppo nanou explores the relationship between body, space, and cinematic language, drawing inspiration from the imagery of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

What was the genesis of goldroom, and what did you want to bring to light in this second episode of the Overlook Hotel project?

Rhuena Bracci: «goldroom is a deepening into the liminal, the phantasmatic, into spatio-temporal displacements — above all temporal — across the various planes of choreographic writing and image reception. We carry with us clues and remnants, also in relation to our origins and our history: there will be traces of the previous redrum, some objects, some Figures, because there is always the desire to develop small questions still left open from the previous work.»

Marco Valerio Amico: «The title goldroom was chosen because it is the hotel room where, in the film, the ghosts appear — first the sonic echo of the party, then the party itself, the scene that closes The Shining. Overlook Hotel is taking shape as a saga-project: redrum was a color (the red), goldroom another, and we already have pinkroom in mind for the future (citing Angelo Badalamenti for Fire Walk with Me). There is also the theme of the room, which was already present in the Motel trilogy and here is raised to a higher power: for us it is a place of intimacy, of dwelling, of ghosts, where the perceived, the real, the memory and the fact blur into one another.»

RB: «What interests us about the room is its being a threshold, a filter that gives access to an elsewhere, to another time.»

At a dramaturgical/choreographic level, can a fundamental difference be identified in goldroom compared to redrum?

RB: «RB: "There is the desire to deepen the tensions of redrum. The cast is the same, which for us is crucial — we have been working through this language together for several years, and we can now aim for a deeper exploration of the idea of letting dance flourish from the concept of the 'concrete'.»

MVA: «We call 'concrete' a way of approaching the body that moves for intimate and precise reasons — as much as arranging a living room to welcome guests, or executing a taut double twist. The body organizes itself to do something simple or complex, but always clear.»

RB: «It is the way in which the concrete approach to bodily action can let dance flourish from a given imaginary, working on the specific qualities of each performer, finding many different colorations in each one's action qualities, and going even deeper into the emergence of the Figures who give us access to the room — that intimate moment through a threshold.»

MVA: «The Figure is not a character — it is an apparition defined by movement, not by a psyche. We already encountered some in redrum; there will be new ones. The environment will be darker, and there will be a new element: real-time footage that will open further spaces and other times, layering over the existing one of the choreography, the music, and the light.»

Moving to the roots of the entire Overlook Hotel project: in taking on an iconic film like The Shining, did you reflect on the pitfalls you were facing and on how to return the imaginary beyond your own creation?

RB: «We gather certain cardinal stimuli. In the process, some specific qualities of the chosen object — in this case The Shining — are filtered and sedimented, and they emerge. There is a generating and regenerating of the gaze, alongside the gathering of specific emergences: colors, atmospheres, settings, and details.»

MVA: «Our relationship with these references is always guided by a great lightness. The Shining lives in the collective consciousness — everyone shares that unease — and we start from there. There are details we attach ourselves to, capable of evoking ghosts. We will not stage a representation of The Shining's text; we have never done so and I don't believe we ever will. We try to capture a very complex and layered atmosphere. We are taking our time to develop the Overlook Hotel project. Spoiler: there will be more episodes.»

I expected the return of video — I can see it's becoming an important question for you.

MVA: «Here even more so, because there is a programming work that will be executed live, which has informed the choreography just as the choreography has informed the video. By mutual agreement we decided that the performers will see at the last moment what will happen on the screens, so that the two timelines can remain autonomous. Body and video must remain independent while acting on the same instructions. With the video I am looking for fragmentation, an echo, the cinematographic cut. The same research becomes an instruction to inform the body and build the choreography. Rhuena often says "how to fall from the sky all at once? how to appear suddenly?": how to change state abruptly? without carrying the memory of what came before, or without anticipating what will come? There is a continuous influence between the linguistic planes, generated by shared rules, to escape the hierarchy in which the body serves the camera or vice versa. The aim is to hold a balance in between.»

RB: «It is a temporal dialogue, in a way.»

MVA: «Time is the object we address in goldroom in a precise, conscious, and named way — to show things from different points of view, asking ourselves how to create different spaces, places, and times in order to compose them together.»

The soundtrack is once again by Bruno Dorella — you have clearly found an excellent working relationship.

RB: «With Bruno over these years there has been a wonderful exchange in the rehearsal room. There is a very particular dialogue because he has a sensitivity entirely his own regarding the body's response to the sounds he proposes: he has an ear that refers back to the body, a corporeal reading that makes the dialogue with dance very fruitful.»

MVA: «Between him and me there is a very close dialogue in the creation and definition of the imaginary. What I appreciate is that, like us, he is above genres — he can move from electronics to noise, to a completely harmonic piece without difficulty, always in service of the imaginary, creating the liminal. I also appreciate his willingness to choose together pieces that are not his own, which in the writing of a soundtrack is a complex matter.»

RB: «Actually, I think we are more 'boxable': he truly operates at 360 degrees.»

goldroom will be on the upper floor of the Mercato Coperto — an unusual but stimulating space.

RB: «That space presents us with a real challenge. From the site visits I found it extremely welcoming, but we will need to be very skilled at layering time, at making the audience forget the floor below and bringing them with us, into our rooms — making them perceive these thresholds that lead into another space-time, that do not eliminate the complexity of the context, but absorb it, take it in.»

MVA: «One of the most important bets is placing a research work like ours in a popular venue, in full public view. Thanks to the Festival we also reach an audience that does not know us, creating a deliberate attention. It is not a mainstream object going into a crowded place, but a niche object that becomes once again a meeting point, a gathering place, hospitable.»

RB: «The set design of goldroom has been developed in collaboration with the Ravenna-based architecture group Denara — Francesco Rambelli and Nicolò Calandrini — who are helping us reflect on how to use the Mercato and what solutions to put in place.»

MVA: «They are a great support both in reflecting on the artistic thinking and in the practical definition of the set design. A fine intuition on Anna Leonardi's part, to pair us with the two architects.»