Director’s Notes

A version of Maurice Ravel’s famous Bolero whose starting point (as in intellectual source) can be found in Horace McCoy’s novel – as well as Sidney Pollack’s film of the same name – “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”, which is stripped bare of any narrative trend, crystallised in a reiteration that repeats and at the same time denies, in apparent contradiction, the threatening musical compulsiveness. At a glance, it is a slightly antiquated dance contest, in which, one by one, the couples are mercilessly eliminated, in a psychological as well as a physical decline: the ‘good clothes’ are slowly stained by sweat, a heel is broken, lipstick is smeared around grimacing mouths that desperately pretend to smile… Is this really a simple contest? Or is it perhaps a man-made hell, just like in Sartre’s “No Exit”? As the bodies seem to dismantle themselves like sad puppets, the anxiety becomes more and more intolerable and we happily go to the slaughter.

Credits

choreography Fabrizio Monteverde music Maurice Ravel costumes Santi Rinciari lighting designer Emanuele De Maria maître de ballet/ choreography assistant Piero Rocchetti