Paco Decina has a taste for particularisms. Discovered in 1987, his show, "Circumevesuviana" slovingly told the story of a small train running at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. "Shadow in rosso antico" immediately refers to the object of its inspiration: the ancient red porphyry used in imperial Rome, whose Renaissance artists made their ideal stone. The imprisonment of forms, the gestural codification - specific to ancient sculpture - join here a choreographic discourse without concessions. This dance, based on a series of ruptures, narrative and formal, generates a variety of climates and images, where humor and gravity clearly reflect the choreographer's intention to attach himself to the "anonymous daily crushed, forgotten under marble and stone" . The many versions of " Besame mucho" soundtrack of Palix-Couturier - are humorously echoing these anonymous voices...
An aesthetic all the more sensitive as it remains close to everyday life.
A choreographer born in Naples, based in Paris, Paco Dècina had already made a name for himself with his previous pieces: "Tempi morti" (1987) and "Circumvesuviana" (1988).
With this recent creation "Ombre in rosso antico", the company called "Post-retroguardia" is a very thorough and rigorous plastic work, beautifully served by the interpretive qualities of the dancers. Here no levelling in the service of a writing but a judicious scenography that plays on an architectural construction of space.
Still time
Memory, a recurring concern in dance, Paco Dècina questions him in his own way through the fascination that marble exerts on man. (The porphyry "old red"). Panels of uneven heights and a central staircase set it in decoration, but Paco Dècina focuses on recalling the daily life of the "light anonymous" beings who inhabit these carved stones, who have worked it or rub shoulders with it day by day without even sometimes seeing it. They are therefore very singular people, rich in a history without fixed references or chronology, who develop desires, tenderness, passion to the rhythm of varied movements.
The still weather sets up a very Latin climate. Soft lights, languid poses where women slowly sink remind them of the paintings of the Italian Renaissance. This immutable time is contrasted by the more turbulent periods that pass through it. These accelerated movements, in the most tragic times evoke war, absence or loneliness just like this man with jerky gestures, riveted to his derisory bouquet of flowers.
Moindre détail
Energy held back and then released, the men cross, accompany each other without recognizing themselves too much. Half-points of pantomime, peplum comic, clock twists, gestures stiffen, tremble. Smiling in the corner, throats outstretched, the arms stretch towards the fancy ride that turns to the grimace, to the swing of gondola.
The choreography includes every detail, the expression of the faces, from a glance, to the thumb that draws nicks. Bellini's music is cut from South American songs (Besame mucho). In addition to the pictorial references, there are more recent images of the great period of Italian cinema.
A long-term dancer, Regina Martino - she also designed the beautiful costumes for the play - seems straight out of a Modigliani painting. She has the strange charm of an Anna Zborowska. Not to mention Andrea Ballaglia, Carlo Diaconale, Donate d'Urso, Claire Rousier and Sophie Lessard who all have an inner look held back by who knows what a dream, which strengthens their personality and surrounds them with a poetic halo.
Orleans Choreographic Production Center
Paco Dècina is definitely a choreographer whose every piece remains in memory. "Circumvesuviana" had taken us irresistibly into the fearless and sensual whirlwind of his Neapolitan city. "Shadow in Rosso Antico", his last show refers in its title to the Ancient Red Porphyry: the ancients willingly lent this extremely hard stone magical and conjuring virtues, while the sculptors had made it their material of choice. The choreographer, on the other hand, attached himself to the quivering of beings before they were frozen in marble. The beauty of the décor immediately gives a very strong plastic imprint to what should be called a show rather than a choreographic piece; indeed the lights, complicit in an often slow and hieratic gesture, quickly leading to a pictorial emotion to which one willingly gives in. Among five gritty panels evoking noble stone and a monumental, aimless staircase, the dancers evolve, often isolated in their inner world, like actors turning a piece of essay in any Cinecitta incorporating various recommendations: "Piu veloce", "meno sad", "piu amorosa" etc.... But the difficult bet of transcribing an emotion so fragmented, is held hands down, thanks to excellent performers like Sophie Lessard, and the rest of the troupe. Regina Martino is not only a performer because she is also the author of the beautiful costumes: no androgynous leotard at Paco, or motto "hide this breast that I can not see!" All superbly ambushed, her dancers do not let us ... marble: this detail, among others, evokes my eyes a choreographer who has a very sure plastic sense and also bathes his choreographies of sensuality and humor.
But the beautiful and talented Regina is not at her first attempt since we had already admired the costumes created for Luisa Casiraghi in "Giu, not c'e piu nessuno" presented to Bagnolet.
The soundtrack, too, plays its role as an emotional catalyst; how to resist "una furtiva lacrima" or "love me for ever"? Sometimes, too, she knows how to be a discreet support to a sufficiently constructed choreographic phrase and a gesture that is like a vital flow: the gesture of the thumb rising from the palm to the arm is very strong and fairly representative of the originality of the choreographer who humorously named his company Post-retroguardia " in order to escape any velocity of classification by chapel. But all the good we think of the choreographer Dècina does not prevent us from appreciating the presence and dramatic intensity of the dancer Paco... which we hope to see again in his future creations.
Seduction and intelligence seem to me to be the essential characteristics (very Italian after all...) of this young choreographer. It does not seem unlikely to me that it will become to European choreography what italian cinema of the 1960s was to the seventh art: an inescapable value.
Paco Dècina's Post-Retroguardia Company has moved to the Orleans Choreographic Production Centre for a creative period. This applies to us, for a few evenings, on the stage of France, his show that sparkles with a thousand lights, as beautiful as its title.
"Shadow in Rosso Antico" will make many dream and captivate others, like this Ancient Red Porphyry that imprisons profiles, breasts and angels, and fascinates the Neapolitan choreographer and dancer Paco Dècina.
Not that this creation is easy at first, the subject is not always very readable and escapes the logic that usually reassures. I don't care. This show, in every respect, offers a series of images that impose themselves by their strength and are anchored in the memory. In an austere setting, hard and cold, like the marble it is supposed to depict, Paco Dècina does not tell a story, but offers us in bits and pieces of tenuous sensations, light and carnal impressions. Remains of memory, fragmented memories. There are many emotions held under the apparent coldness. Paco Dècina draws daily shadows on the large marbles, in front of a staircase that rises towards night. The game of memory to which he engages is made of disappointed loves, seduction, expectation and desires, indifference too. His show is inhabited, intense, he has what it takes breath and soul, without easy effects or grandiloquence.
We must applaud the dancers who surround Paco Dècina. to their technical qualities is added this force of dramatic expression that makes the slightest emotion sensitive.
Paco Dècina plays with music, light and bodies. Norma's opening, smallly chopped and repeated at the envy, provides effective support for the movement. Paradoxically, light is perhaps the least convincing thing in this shadow show. It is necessary to capture every moment of this dense and brief creation. Time passes too fast, and here more than anywhere else. Only marbles, large marbles, have time for them. All poets know this Paco Decina understood.