Pression

Choreography MAURO BIGONZETTI
Music: HELMUT LACHENMANN, FRANZ SCHUBERT
Music consultant: PARIDE BONETTA
Costume design: KRISTOPHER MILLAR, LOIS SWANDALE
Lighting design: CARLO CERRI

Commissioned in 1994 by Reggio Emilia Contemporary Music Festival “Di Nuovo Musica”, Pression is clearly a product of the festival’s characteristic penchant for experimentation with various genres, blending classic with modern. For four dancers, two men and two women, the choreography (created originally for the Balletto di Toscana) is made up of two pieces performed to the accompaniment of absolutely antithetical melodies, Helmut Lachenmann’s cello solo Pression (from which the choreography takes its name) and variations from Death and the Maiden by Schubert.
Mauro Bigonzetti explains: “more than a ballet, it’s an unadorned, non-didactic musical action without the benefit of stage sets, in which movement and gesture exist in symbiosis with the music. The final goal is to create a single, seamless tissue incorporating both movement and music, even when the shift is made from the radical approach of Lachenmann to the deep emotional world of Schubert.”

Created for the Balletto di Toscana, 1994

Restaged for Aterballetto:
Venice, Palafenice
26 maggio 1999

Length: 18’ 30’’
Ballet for 4 dancers