In 2021, after having already collaborated several times with Oriente Occidente within the European projects Moving Beyond Inclusion, ImPArt and Europe Beyond Access, the choreographer Aristide Rontini is hosted in the spaces of Oriente Occidente Studio for two periods of artistic residence in March and October 2021.
During his stay in Rovereto, he works with the dancer Cristian Cucco and the dramaturg Flavia Dalila D'amico on the project Alexis 2.0. It originates from the need to deepen the choreographic and performative research of the previous Alexis, as well as to carry out its production plan according to the original intentions in an ecological perspective that contrasts the tendency to hyper-production and favors the respect of the creative cycles of single projects and authors that sometimes need longer times of maturation and more considerable budgets.
The research develops from a hundred-page letter in which Alexis, the protagonist of Marguerite Yourcenar's book, leaves his wife because he discovers he is homosexual. Writing is both an introspective tool and an instrument of communication and Alexis acts with the courage of someone who intimately accepts himself also through the narration of who he is to the other, self-determining himself. The same happens in the act of body writing, through which the protagonist retraces his biography narrating events, episodes, feelings and thoughts that he has never confided even to himself.
Alexis' communication is not fluid but jagged, almost evocative. So becomes the movement: it proceeds by leaps, introspective and philosophical digressions, hesitations, flashbacks and associations. In the discursive flow the negative meanings that have been attributed to homosexuality emerge, the effort to conform to the standard, together with the feeling of naturalness, simplicity, spontaneity that accompany the realization of sexual desire, whatever it may be.
What attracted me most to this play is Alexis' communicative need to share his intimacy, to lay himself bare, to take courage and initiate change, as well as the epistolary form. Both content and form are central to Alexis' staging, and the audience attending the performance witnesses the confession. The body and choreography make themselves legible, albeit not logical, and are meant to communicate by evoking images and emotions.
- Aristide Rontini
The project is supported by Europe Beyond Access Creative Europe.
