A solemn dance of ritual memory and ancestral harmony. Choreographic actions by Davide Bombana for 5 performers with live music.

In an empty space, apart from the presence of a piano with other percussion instruments lying on the ground, and in a time perceived immediately as dense, the dancers of the Balletto di Roma encounter the energetic music of Katia Pesti and the fascinating voice of the African singer Gabin Dabiré. The movement of bodies emerging from an umbral cone pass through the tissue of sound to give rise to a solemn dance, recalling the rite as the symbol of both beginning and transience. Three underground melodies, rapid instants of abandon and sensuality, moments that mix harmony and vehemence, music, dance and song lead towards ancestral, mysterious places. The strong vitality resulting is nurtured by the heterogeneous nature of the group and by the mixture of genres, exchanging richness and resonance with one another. This show, with Davide Bombana’s choreographies, samples distant worlds and supplies the spectator with hints of exotic atmospheres. An important physical and sound presence, that of the dancers and musicians on stage, coming together and “clashing” to bring to life a microcosm made up of rhythms, colours and untoward signs. Metaphor of a cultural opening now unstable, Arcaico unveils the attraction to an indefinite origin, a harmony that is utopic and profoundly ancestral. It is a work that is perhaps intended as antidote for and protest against growing intolerance, incommunicability and the deep fear at the root of human relations: a warning to retrieve a forgotten, perhaps not yet lost, opening towards and acceptance of the Other.