Since 1991, the year of the duo Terramara’s inception, Michele Abbondanza and Antonella Bertoni have been creating in tandem. The creative input comes from both, and in their shows, the relationship between the two often turns into a field of investigation on which other main themes, such as pain and tragedy, are grafted. These themes, along with a fascination for mythology, recur frequently—except in shows like Spartacus and Romanzo d’infanzia and creations for other companies like Figli d’Adamo for Compagnia Aterballetto—in their long artistic trajectory. As early as 1992, the year in which the couple choreographed Città di Antigone, a show/event for a hundred actors by Marco Baliani, mythology made an appearance in their journey. Several years later, in 2004, it resurfaced with their choreography for a production of Oedipus Rex directed by Roberto Guicciardini. The theme of pain and war strongly asserts itself in the duet Pabbaja-abbandono della casa (1994), choreographed by Michele Abbondanza, and in their collaboration with Marco Baliani for the theatrical show Sakrificë.
Their interest in mythology and sacrifice was reaffirmed in 2000 when Michele Abbondanza and Antonella Bertoni began the trilogy Ho male all’altro, inspired by the theme of sacrifice for love and the ancient tragedy by Euripides: Alcestis first, then Medea. These motifs are translated into choreography through the study of self-sacrifice (Alcestis, 2002), and the sacrifice of others (but still an extension of one’s own body), the children in Medea, a show created between 2003 and 2004. The third part, the new work that the Festival Oriente Occidente co-produces this year, completes the project. The authors write: “We continue to be surrounded by the tragic much more than when, in 2000, we started the work on the sacrificial trilogy. Inspired by mythological themes, the first two parts followed a concept of numerical expansion of the sacrificial lamb. There is one victim in the self-sacrifice of Alcestis, two in the sacrifice of the greatest good, the children, in Medea. The couple, now a family, assumes the iconographic impact of a people. A sacrificial phantasmagoria of appearances and disappearances, based on the idea that if someone was there before, an instant later, no one is there. A corporal work of gesticulating figures and poses. Word that becomes vocal writing. In the sequence of images, a myth will be recognizable each time, the engine of the action but not necessarily the protagonist. The consequent and eventual tragic content will, rather than be represented, serve as a pretext for the definition of tragic forms with neither decorative nor illustrative intent. Each character will bring different aspects of humanity through their physical and acoustic masks in a dramatic process of pressure on form towards the formless, towards a new potential beauty.”
