(...) the work stands out for its communicative power, clarity and rigour of imagery, and intense emotional force. Stefano Mazzotta confirms himself as a mature artistic voice, and Zerogrammi as a production company now in full development, ready to take on large-scale compositions: a broad perspective which, in a time of studies and short performances, is lacking in the work of many of his contemporaries. Maddalena Giovannelli, HYSTRIO

(...) the choreographer engages with aesthetics and technique in a highly distinctive way; he convinces and captivates precisely because his works are imbued with mysticism, humanity and freedom. The classical subject he has chosen is rich in meaning, and in the performance its limited abstraction is counterbalanced by a great deal of narrative and reflection. A high-quality narrative, carrying considerable weight and an intensely powerful message. Giselle Roiz Miranda, GBOpera Magazine

It is through the expressive power of dance that Alcestis’ drama is brought into the present, becoming a question about love and about how much each of us, both universally and individually, is willing to give of ourselves. This emerges above all in the final duet: Alcestis’ encounter and confrontation with the one who, for her, is life and love itself, and without whom no survival would ever be possible. Zerogrammi received repeated and warm applause from the audience at the Ridotto.

Clelia Stefani, Il Giornale di Vicenza

But once more he saw her face, turned back towards him, in a smile bright as hope, as a promise: to return to him, grown, from sombre death; to him, alive... Then he pressed his hands against his forehead, kneeling, so as to see nothing more than that smile. (Alcestis, R. M. Rilke)

Alcestis is the story of a heart-rending and tragic farewell between two lovers—a topos of literature across all times and places. A tragedy charged with immense love, it privileges the human dimension of its narrative, setting itself apart from other mythical farewells, including Hector and Andromache’s at the Scaean Gates or Shakespearean partings. It is the tale of a farewell sealed by the most sublime of sacrifices; a farewell that becomes meditation and remembrance in the gestures and words of its silent protagonist. Alcestis reveals to the reader a nostalgic and melancholic horizon which recalls—more in the depiction of her figure and actions than in her own words—the most moving farewells in literature: from Ariadne to Creusa, from Werther to Jacopo Ortis and Emma Bovary, from ’Ntoni in The House by the Medlar Tree to Hölderlin, Rimbaud, Kafka and Neruda.

In farewell, an entire world recedes, remaining only in the traveller’s longing. Day dies and the moon rises. Light withdraws, slender, foreshadowing night. The farewell recounted by Alcestis lies at the edge of a space, on the threshold of a departure into the unknown. In the presence of Admetus, within the landscape of familiar things, the shadow of an ultimate distance already begins to seep in: the infinite space that separates—a space not narrated by Euripides, but merely evoked, empty and filled with deafening silence. A span of time impossible to define in terms of duration, stretching from the moment Alcestis decides to leave the world of the living to the moment of her sacrifice.

It is within this span of time that this creation finds its foundation: a silent monologue, a soliloquy on the essence of memory and on the profound truth of things, multiplied on stage through a plurality of performers. Alcestis gazes nostalgically towards the distant horizon behind her. The vertigo of memory. Her body sounds the Requiem of a lost elsewhere, holding back the final breath that separates her from a new and unknown state of being. From this border, she will move beyond the prison of oblivion and noise, into a poetic, silent, suspended time. The presence of emptiness. Her language is fragmented, broken: at times a living voice, at others the echo of music and sounds from a farewell like so many others—the rustle of coats put on before leaving home, a light kiss on the cheek, and finally a silent “lifting” of the soul.