ITALIA RUSSIA 2011

As part of the initiatives supported by the Italian and Russian governments during the 2011 Year of Cultural Dialogue between Italy and Russia, Zerogrammi transferred its artistic work to Russia for one month, settling in the town of Kostroma.

There, the company encountered Dialogue Dance, with whom it began the creation of the performance Punto di Fuga.

This choreography for four choreographers/performers constituted the first step of a broader project inspired by Seneca’s Thyestes, of which the second and definitive chapter would become Pasto a Due.

The project calendar began with a choreographic residency at Stantsia Art Venue between January and February 2011, continuing with the Russian preview of the creation (12–13 February 2011, Kostroma), its Italian debut at the Teatro a Corte in July 2011, and finally its Russian debut at the Tsekh Festival in December 2011.

Punto di Fuga received three nominations — Best Choreographers, Best Creation and Best Lighting Design — at the prestigious Golden Mask, the Russian ceremony awarding the finest theatrical productions presented across the country, held within the setting of the Bolshoi Theatre.

The entire project was realized thanks to the support of Fondazione Teatro Piemonte Europa, Teatro a Corte, Tsekh Festival, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities.

DIARY OF A CHOREOGRAPHIC RESIDENCY DURING THE 2011 YEAR OF CULTURAL EXCHANGE BETWEEN ITALY AND RUSSIA

(by Stefano Mazzotta)

We are aboard an almost deserted train, scattered through the night.

The compartment, dimly illuminated by Liberty-style lamps, smells of damp wool. The window is framed by curtains with a pale floral pattern carrying a distinctly 1960s aftertaste. I have the sensation that I am no longer in Italy.

A glass teacup clasped within an ornate wrought-iron holder, filled with steaming black tea, brings to mind stories of austere eastern rulers and fascinating gypsy princesses. To the best of my memory, nothing remotely similar exists aboard our modern Eurostar trains.

Beyond the three layers of worn fabric, once precious, beyond the fogged windows, there is a blinding white expanse whose light fears neither night nor darkness — which only make it seem more immense, empty and yet strangely reassuring.

Snow everywhere.

Only yesterday, in Piazza Solferino, people were sitting around a table discussing possibilities, a genuine interest in collaboration and a shared project connected to 2011, the Year of Cultural Dialogue between Italy and Russia.

And yet I can hardly believe I am already aboard the slow Moscow–Kostroma train.

A full night’s journey to cover three hundred kilometres, honouring with long stops every tiny station lost within the steppe.

So these people from the Foundation are serious?

Done and dusted. Said and done.

I marvel only because I am unaccustomed to such immediacy. Italy generally moves according to far more “reflective” timing.

How many degrees below zero might there be outside?

We will soon discover it firsthand. We will laugh at the strange sensation of stalactites forming inside our noses, at purple fingers caused by attempting to smoke a cigarette without gloves (reckless!), at the priceless relief offered by holy radiators inside public spaces and hotel rooms (efficient and capillary Russian gas pipelines!).

Once off the train — dressed in outfits vaguely resembling Totò and Peppino in Piazza Duomo — we meet the local Ivan and his colleague Evgeny, who will become our collaborators for the duration of the month.

Together we will create the choreographic project for which we crossed the Alps and reached, through the endless steppe and accompanied by countless exhilarating questions, the land of sauerkraut and vodka.

It will be a month of clashes and confrontations, as inevitably happens whenever one accepts the “challenge” of dialogue between cultures.

It could not be otherwise.

And the possibility of losing something along the way, of having to surrender part of oneself through comparison, of being scratched, bent by debate, of becoming a little less “ourselves” in order to understand the “others” a little more — this inspires no small amount of fear.

But it cannot be otherwise, and indeed it is the first precious step toward granting the unfamiliar the attention it deserves.

Awaiting us throughout this month of work will be deadly sheets of ice outside every doorway, endless discussions about what should be done, the romantic frozen bed of the Volga River, differing ideas about choreography, photographic shoots with frozen lenses and violet fingertips, days of discouragement and exhaustion, days of harmony and lightness, supportive emails from Mara Serina and Paolo Cantù, countless quasi-Italian coffees accompanying our reflections, double and triple socks, gloves and scarves, an emotional Russian premiere, a rewarding photography exhibition — and before all of this, the precious opportunity to undertake a new journey of discovery.

Today, back in temperate Turin, the value of that journey reveals itself in all its richness: it was a unique artistic and human experience, for the intensity and frequency of the “struggle,” for the passion and certainty that provide answers to the craft of creation, for the discouragement and doubt that generate profound questions demanding response, for the pride of carrying a fragment of Italy beyond its borders, and for the wonder of feeling just a little more without borders oneself.