Alessio Maria Romano reveals that in the “theatre of movement” he has found a “discipline and an additional expressiveness to the understanding of the instances of the body”. As a peculiar and prominent figure on the Italian theatre scene, Romano remains a bridge between the arts of theatre and dance. Besides training as an actor at the prestigious acting school of Turin’s Teatro Stabile, he also graduates in Laban/Bartenieff movement analysis in New York and Brighton. He studies with Raffaella Giordano, Maria Consagra, Carolyn Carlson, Dominque Dupuy. Influenced by American postmodern dance, he employs natural movement and the dynamics of exchange and participation with his performers as a means of talking about the world.
Through his collaboration in the choreographies for the theatrical works of Luca Ronconi, Carmelo Rifici, Valter Malosti and Jacopo Gasmann and coordination of the acting school “Luca Ronconi” of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, Romano has investigated the human body as it moves organically, rhythmically and dynamically through space, respecting its anatomical and relational freedom. Among his recognitions, he has been awarded the Critics' Prize for theatre choreography in 2015 and the Silver Lion at the Biennale Teatro 2020 Theatre Festival, where he also presented his latest creation Bye Bye for his self-named company.
Oriente Occidente commissioned an original creation in which young professional dancers will meet on stage with dance students during some artistic residencies aimed at the creation of the performance Choròs. Il luogo dove si danza, an original project set at the Campana dei Caduti, in Rovereto, at the first lights of dawn, in front of and around this memorial to the fallen of all wars, celebrating peace. In the author’s words, the performance features an «instinctive and ancient ceremony, in which fragments of images, splinters of the collective unconscious, follow after each another. In which singularities blend into the collective while at the same time rebelling against it and its rules». Romano builds on simple everyday actions, such as walking, creating a score of repetitive ritualistic movements. Men and women are transformed into a mass, a herd, a flock and finally a chorus, witnesses to events that speak and communicate with the body in the Choròs (the dance stage in ancient Greek theatre).
