The Fifth Winter | Bach

The relationship between two people in a white space, waiting for the last winter to pass. In the heart of The Fifth Winter, the profoundly “dense” bodies of Maria Muñoz and Pep Ramis construct their own geography of waiting, crossed by the breath of the words of the Neapolitan poet Erri de Luca, who freely inspired the texts of the performance. One of the songs reads: «A cold wind, like the one you come from/ that tingles on your face. Thousands of stars. They seem to try creating a line, chasing each other to form this line/ And you, who are you?».

After last year's success at the Festival with the solo piece The Mountain, the Truth & the Paradise, Pep Ramis now returns with this duet, performed with María Muñoz, his partner of over thirty years, with whom he founded the Mal Pelo dance company to complete a research into movement, which always features original texts and soundtracks. In a continuous eclipsis of the scars of life, which – for Pep and María – is permeated with failure, like a vital body fluid, their poetics revolves around three key words: absence, hope, loss.

Created in 2015 for the Biennale de la Val de Marne and then hosted on tour in Europe and Canada, but never presented in Italy, The Fifth Winter envelops two bodies in a meditative and rarefied atmosphere, aided by the acting (with voice off) and the spatial rendering of sound. In a time that seems not to flow, María and Pep implement a series of waiting strategies, like a ritual vigil to commemorate something that is never revealed to us, with a background composition by Fanny Thollot punctuated by the voices of the Tunisian Alia Sellami and the flamenco singing of Niño de Elche.

Linked to pure movement and joyful dialogue with music is the other Mal Pelo title hosted at the Festival this year: Bach. A blockbuster solo created by María Muñoz in 2005, and originally performed by her, on selected preludes and fugues from Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier, in the recorded performance by the great Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, with his unique style. On stage the intense Italian dancer Federica Porello, a long-time collaborator of Mal Pelo, who inherited the piece from the choreographer in 2016. In, out, on and with the music, the solo follows Bach's gruelling variations, the voices in the counterpoint enhanced by Gould, the expressiveness of the timbre, the performer's hallmark snappy touch. A challenge with two giants of music conducted to the point of exhaustion. Won, in silence, by an obstinate dance.