gruppo nanou’s new creation “goldroom” on stage

Liminal spaces — transitional places of uncertain status — are increasingly entering the collective imagination, above all in relation to the virtual world, as in the recent film Backrooms by Kane Parsons. Yet these threshold environments, set in an indefinite space-time, reflecting a mental dimension whose existence we sense but which is only occasionally, or with difficulty, accessible, certainly have a much longer history than the endless empty yellow-walled rooms that have spread across the web. gruppo nanou, a dance company based in Ravenna and active since 2004, has for two years been devoted to a cycle entitled Overlook Hotel (quoting The Shining), which investigates the paradoxical sensations of an environment inhabited in a spurious way. After redrum — Ubu Award 2024 for Best Dance Performance — goldroom had its debut at Ravenna Festival, at the Mercato coperto, thus outside a standard theatrical space, and was then performed at Teatro India in Rome, in the Sala Oceano Indiano, as part of Fuori Programma, where we caught it.

THE TWO WORKS are linked by a multifocal construction of space, without a defined centre, with reflective floors suggesting a breach, and music curated by Bruno Dorella, drummer of well-known bands on the independent scene such as OvO and Bachi da pietra, and recently active with the electronic solo project Carte Gold. While for redrum Dorella had created a soundtrack made entirely of pieces composed for the occasion — it was also released as an album last year by Subsound Records — in goldroom original tracks, performed live, alternate with a selection embracing, among others, Joy Division, Kid Koala, Miles Davis, Chrystabell and David Lynch, Tricky. As Portishead's Only You lulls us, six performers gradually make their entrance: Carolina Amoretti, Marina Bertoni, Rhuena Bracci, Andrea Dionisi, Agnese Gabrielli, Marco Maretti.

EACH ONE has their own signature, their own way of crossing that space — Maretti's loping gait is fantastic — which makes the possibility of actual communication uncertain. While the audience is invited to enter, exit, change position, screens relay images of the environment that nonetheless call spatio-temporal unity into question. goldroom, created by Marco Valerio Amico and Rhuena Bracci, is defined as a "choreographic installation". The temptation, though, is to live continuously, for the full two hours, the spell of this place where all reference points are lost and you can forget yourself. Real bodies too, and not only virtual rooms, can radiate that eeriness, that unsettling mysteriousness, which belongs to our time.