FLORENCE - A new Italian author with a prestigious poster of an Italian opera institution (in this case the Mai Musical Florentine)... after Paris. The chance of our dance also leads to this kind of strange journey. The fact is that while Paco Decina has been operating successfully for more than eight years now in France (where he receives constant ministerial grants and where he produces in prestigious contemporary dance theatres, such as the Théâtre de la Ville), it is only today that he manages to create for an Italian theatre and for his own ballet company.
See the occasion of this commission - "The Banquet of Sable" - to get to know up close a singular author, whose poetry and manner, deliciously Mediterranean, seem to have opened a gap in the difficult "establishment" of French ballet.
"The French are terribly rational," says Paco. In their work, the problems are almost highlighted, conceptualized. On the contrary, my world is something instinctive, linked to a capacity for vision, to the ideas that become images that I sediment in myself and that I stage as if for "automatic writing", ensuring that it is these that arouse emotions and personal sensations in the audience. And maybe that's what fascinates them in a particular way."
From Circumvesuviana to "Shadows in Ancient Red" , or until the very recent "Ciro Esposito was Vicenzo" , it seems obvious that a constant element of your poetics is "napolitanity", a napolitanity that is of course a state of the heart, a way of conceiving life...
"Many things are part of my culture and I rediscover them unconsciously in my work. Many critics, for example, describe my choreography as "pictorial," quoting Pontorno, Michelangelo, the Neapolitan Baroque. Jokingly, I have fun defining my style as "Japanese Baroque" or "Revival Expressionism." However, these "references" are totally unconscious: the use of ancient art is something that has accompanied me since childhood. Naples is a permanent forge of images that penetrate the imagination: then my family, who cares for antiques and my studies in drawing did the rest. But the purpose of my work is different from the purely visual aspect. There is a need to dig into the "deep memory" of man, with a sense of melancholy worried, a fear about the uncertainty of existence, with this sense of eastern fatalism which, perhaps indeed, belongs to "napolitanity" ... »
Your choreographic research therefore relies mainly on the Emotional element...
Absolutely. You see, for me, theatre has a very special meaning. I am opposed to art as entertainment, as a show-distraction. On the other hand, I consider that theatre must have its "rituality", that is, it must allow the viewer to meet again, to finally let these emotions, these deep instincts that today's life, terribly chanted by rhythms, false values, external emergencies, makes us totally lose. The dimension of the theatrical space, the silence that surrounds the event on stage, already lead the viewer to an inner dialogue with himself. The spectacle he attends must then provoke new moods in him."
And so, as a choreographer, your work does not pay particular attention to "technical" ...
"Let's say that I'm not particularly interested in having "cadavers" on stage, dancers who dryly perform a score, written by others. I write a lot about dancers, I need to share with them a philosophy of life. That's why the journey that takes place during the creation is for me absolutely more interesting than the "work done". Today, for the first time, I have to work with classical dancers —and I am at the beginning of this experience —I proceed by instituting a kind of interpersonal dialogue that helps me understand that, in the end, it will follow me in my journey. And I have to say that I find it very stimulating."
Let's focus for a moment on the creative process. How, for example, is "Sand Banquet" born?
"I am very troubled by this life which highlights its most bitter aspects. And slowly in me an Emotional knot is formed that oppresses me viscerally, which forces me to visions that then become the starting point of the staging. The result is a kind of personal dramaturgy that I then try to make universal, readable for all viewers. What is the "Sand Banquet"? That's all. It is time that passes, it is the nostalgia of a lost garden, a smothered cry of love that creeps in us with a new insolent force. It is the whole of humanity that shares the loss of illusions. These illusions that I'm trying to come back to."
Unlike the original program, which announced a score by Alban Berg, you opted for excerpts from Arvo Part. What for?
"I don't like to be dependent on the dramaturgy of the music. An 'imposed' score imposes, sorry for the expression, an inevitable theatrical version. While my expressive necessities place my way of telling in the foreground. That's why I chose Part, which gives me a more dimension... metaphysical, unreal."
After this important Florentine rendezvous ("Sand Banquet" is part of the triptych that also includes the Tudorian "Pillar of Fire", as well as the Italian premiere of Paul Taylor's "Rite of Spring" on the communal stage, from June 15 to 1, ed.), you will return to Paris. Do you already have any new plans?
"The Théâtre de la Ville invited me again with a production of 95, entitled 'Stolen Sea'. I will also continue to teach: the other important aspect of my experience as an author, thanks to the constant and stimulating contact with the most diverse sensibilities."
