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LOLITA

2014

A PERFORMANCE
ARCHIVE

SILVIA BATTAGLIO

COREOGRAF* RESIDENTI // RESIDENT CHOREOGRAPHERS

LOLITA

  • Born as a co-production with Odin Teatret and developed under the artistic supervision of Julia Varley, LOLITA represents the first chapter of the Identity Trilogy and forms part of a personal investigation into the theme of identity as connected to age.

    Its point of departure lies in the question of whether or not we truly belong to ourselves, to our own time, to an age that represents us yet often fails to correspond to our inner time. Within this disjunction between age and existence hides a place I would call: Lolita.

    From her small childhood corner immersed in a garden of red apples, a now-adult Lolita travels backward through time, retracing her “first time.” She experiments, provokes and questions adults in an attempt to intercept the trajectories of possibility. She passes through disappointment and wonder, purity and sin, within her intimate journey between adolescence and maturity.

    Lolita weaves together the threads of memory; then trembles, laughs and sighs when, in the forest of her childhood, she encounters Mr. Humbert — the dark figure from fairy tales, half man and half wolf — who, fearing old age, steals time from an innocent child, as innocent as Little Red Riding Hood yet cruel as a demon.

    Lolita searches for traces of the child she once was, the child Humbert took away from her. She leaps across time, loses it, and finally attempts to hold onto it. Between bewilderment and play, like a tightrope walker, she confronts a luminous world filled with hidden dangers, attempting to place herself within the uncertain boundaries of a reality in constant transformation — a reality destined to endlessly shift its ethical values and to question even those certainties that seem unquestionable, such as the right to one’s own childhood.

    Woman, old woman, child, cruel, tender and enigmatic, Lolita is alone because no adult loves her for who she truly is. So she pretends to be someone else within the perverse theatre of life: at times ingenuous, at times cunning, projecting her body into the perdition of an ambiguous and metamorphic dimension where “love” and “power” coexist in the same instant, penetrating the deepest layers of being and traversing them through passion, bitterness and ultimately irony.

  • regia e interpretazione / by and with SILVIA BATTAGLIO | consulenza artistica / artistic advice JULIA VARLEY | liberamente ispirato a / inspired by LOLITA (VLADIMIR NABOKOV) | coreografie e drammaturgia / choreography and dramaturgy SILVIA BATTAGLIO | suggestioni letterarie / literary references CHARLES PERRAULT, PIA PERA | musica / music TORGUE&HOUPPIN, ALVA NOTO, BIZET | disegno luci / light design MASSIMILIANO BRESSAN | produzione / production BIANCATEATRO | coproduzione / coproduction ODIN TEATRET (DK) | sostegno alla realizzazione del progetto / support to the production ZEROGRAMMI, TANGRAM TEATRO | con il contributo di / with the contribution of REGIONE PIEMONTE, MIBAC MINISTERO PER I BENI E LE ATTIVITÀ CULTURALI |

  • LOLITA // IN SCENA

    PHOTOGALLERY

    #PHOTOGALLERY, #CREAZIONI

    LOLITA // IN SCENA

    PH. G. DI BELLO, S. MAZZOTTA

    LOLITA // teaser #2

    VIDEO

    #TEASER, #CREAZIONI

    LOLITA // teaser #2

    ​

  • genere → genre TEATRODANZA/DANCETHEATRE

    pubblico → audience 14+

    durata → duration 1h

BACK TO FORMATS

“Silvia Battaglio constructs an intense dramaturgy, blending literary sources into a rewriting that is agile, powerful and perversely compelling, merging with a stage action in which physicality predominates. She employs whatever means are necessary in order to be effective.

This Lolita by Silvia Battaglio — a work that opens the curtain onto themes we would rather bury beneath the carpet of civilization, pointing at the monster caught in the act while forgetting that horror lurks within every soul — reminds us, should we have forgotten it, that the function of the stage is to speak to the world about the world: to lift the veils, to shake the artificial security of civilized living.

When theatre expresses itself with its true force, it offers no reassurance whatsoever: it is a lucid gaze upon the harshness of existence, upon life both beautiful and cruel.”

— Enrico Pastore | Lo sguardo alternativo alle Live Arts


“Silvia Battaglio investigates the ambiguous and driving force of the protagonist from the novel by Vladimir Nabokov.

Lolita is the result of an artistic residency in Holstebro, Denmark, home of Odin Teatret — an extraordinarily fortunate environment for the artist who, with Io amo Helen, a work highly appreciated by Eugenio Barba and Julia Varley, received praise and above all the opportunity to ‘build’ her Lolita.

It is an apparently light text in which requests intertwine with blackmail, seduction becomes a weapon, and love slips into perversion. At times provocative without ever becoming excessive, the work perfectly conveys the sensation of an unchosen love.

The dance proposed by Silvia Battaglio is always precise and deeply engaging. Despite the pouring rain, the audience was numerous and greatly appreciated the performance.”

— F. Roma | TeatriOnLine


“Upon a carpet of red apples, making use of the perfect bodily control that has become her unmistakable hallmark, the Turin-based performer evokes the bond with her tormentor through a narrative whose painful contemporary relevance lies precisely in taking the necessary distance from the original literary source.

Words become boulders that the performer further detonates by modulating her voice, through a grin, through the intensity of a gaze, or through the force of silence itself: a successful preview awaiting its official debut within the prestigious setting of Odin Teatret of Eugenio Barba.”

— R. Canavesi | Teatroteatro.it

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