Monday, May 07, 2007

Emio Greco's "Hell" Dance Theater based on Dante's "Inferno"

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Emio Greco of the acclaimed Emio Greco/PC dance theater company (won the Philip Morris Arts Prize for dance), is in the process of wrapping it's American Tour of "Hell"  loosely based on Dante's "Inferno". The troupe, is known for their extremely controlled gesticulation and articulated shudders in an  |ber-modern style.

 

Emio Greco was raised in Brindisi, a southern Italian town. To open career possibilities he went to the Riviera starting out as a gotta-dance chorus boy, working with topless showgirls in a nightclub called Studio Circus that was ''much less glamorous'' than the La Cage Aux Folles. But dancing every night in these flashy, colorful and beautiful shows -- were full of joy and simplicity, and laid the foundation for his career.

 

Hell    begins with a shimmering electric arch studded with lightbulbs -- akin to the entrance of a circus sideshow -- appearing onstage with the surreal suddenness of the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The dancers walk out on a largely barren Waiting-for-Godot set, the blankness acting as a ``kind of magma, swallowing everything and creating a new language for the new era, a world where everything is disconnected, where the media and the Internet have made the private and public realm melt together.''

Over the course of Hell, the dancers embrace the classic ballet vocabulary of Swan Lake with the background soundtrack veering between eerie electronic sounds, Japanese music and Beethoven: ''A Clockwork Orange was very much in our minds as we did this piece.'' At the end, they stand nude on the barren stage, as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony plays in the background.

Whew!!! That's Hell???

 

DANCE

'Hell' Yes! Just Dig those Heavenly City Nights

The Miami Herald

By Tom Austin

Sun, May. 06, 2007

 

'HELL': The tour wraps this week at the Colony Theatre.

On an ordinary morning in Minneapolis, dancer and choreographer Emio Greco of the Emio Greco/PC dance theater company -- who will be wrapping up his American tour of Hell,  loosely based on Dante's Inferno,  this week in (aptly enough) South Beach -- is taking a break from rehearsals at the Walker Art Center with a telephone chat that skitters around the past, future and a modern cultural universe gone mad with deconstruction.

At the Colony Theatre on Lincoln Road, Miami Light Project will present the company (the ''PC'' comes from Greco's artistic partner, Dutch theater director Pieter C. Scholten) with all due intellectual pomp, though Greco started out as a gotta-dance chorus boy on the Riviera, working with topless showgirls in a nightclub that was ''much less glamorous'' than the flesh and feathers gestalt of La Cage Aux Folles.

``I live in Amsterdam now, a very sophisticated city, but I was raised in a little southern Italian town called Brindisi, and 20 years ago, I was struggling in my career and had no idea of how to open the door to the future. So I went to Cannes and worked in a nightclub called Studio Circus, dancing every night in these flashy, colorful and beautiful shows -- they were full of joy and simplicity, and we danced to songs like Aretha Franklin's Pink Cadillac.''

Now a long way from the chorus, Greco and his acclaimed company, known for their extremely controlled gesticulation and articulated shudders in such |ber-modern pieces as Rimasto Orfano and Double Points: One & Two, have won the Philip Morris Arts Prize for dance. And Greco has embraced the postmodern scuffle of his personal history.

Hell  opens with a cabaret-gone-disco preamble, the eight dancers dressed in everything from skirts to caftans, lip-synching, smoking and gyrating to Pink Cadillac, songs by Taylor Dayne and Midnight Oil, and -- what else -- Marilyn Manson's Beautiful People. Nightclubs, from cabaret to the techno thump of modern dance palaces, have long been a metaphor for the underworld, as Greco observes: ``To many people, hell is unpredictability, life gone out of control, and a peeling away of the layers that protect our privacy.''

On South Beach, the ''American Riviera'' that's all about Disco Inferno, cruel velvet ropes and pitiless pop, Greco is hoping for a certain resonance: ``I've never been to Miami before, but the image of the city is so pop, all those stereotypes of sun, beaches and nightclubs, and yet, it's an interesting moment in the city, with the art community that's there now, and this new voice will hopefully respond to Hell.''

Hell  truly begins with a shimmering electric arch studded with lightbulbs -- akin to the entrance of a circus sideshow -- appearing onstage with the surreal suddenness of the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey. The dancers walk out on a largely barren Waiting-for-Godot set, the blankness acting as a ``kind of magma, swallowing everything and creating a new language for the new era, a world where everything is disconnected, where the media and the Internet have made the private and public realm melt together.''

Over the course of Hell,  the dancers embrace the classic ballet vocabulary of Swan Lake  with the background soundtrack veering between eerie electronic sounds, Japanese music and Beethoven: ''A Clockwork Orange  was very much in our minds as we did this piece.'' At the end, they stand nude on the barren stage, as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony  plays in the background.

``Like all of us, they have been exposed by modern life, a nakedness that is much deeper than simply not wearing clothes. From there, they have to start over, adopt a new way of thinking and being, and begin a new life.''

On his day off in Miami, Greco is hoping to see the ocean and its ''sense of infinite possibility,'' while discovering the ''less predictable'' parts of the city. As with his dancers at the end of Hell,  he's hoping to beat the odds of life: ``I don't want to be corrupted by the clichis of Miami, the iconography of the beach, but perhaps, in the end, I'll just lay in the sand and rest. The clichis of a city are so tempting.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/277/story/96761.html

IF YOU GO

What: 'Hell,' presented by the Miami Light Project

When: 8 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday

Where: Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach

Tickets: $28 at ticketmaster.com

Info: 305- 576-4350 or miamilightproject.com.

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