There is a certain classicism in the contemporary argument on dance maintained for almost thirty years by Michele Abbondanza and Antonella Bertoni with their company based in Rovereto. Classicism in the sources (Alcesti, Medea, Sons of Adam, Spartacus), in the shape and in the units of narration, which is old fashioned according to some, devoted more to the exaltation of the process rather than to the realization of a finished and coherent product. The classicism of Abbondanza/Bertoni, however, is one which embraces the present; an acute observation of reality is transposed into a dance theater whose school of thought and heritage are very clear, and which has become highly personalized and modulated t over the years according to their projects and thematic cycles of investigation. Their latest work, Hyenas, the second stage of the three-year Hybrid project, after Clown Time, in which Michele and Antonella explore the relationship between the human and the beast adheres very closely to this approach.
Defined by the creators as "a piece for five minotaurs" (here again the classicism), Hyenas is a discourse about the face, the countenance or rather the 'facade' that hides and masks. The show transposes the idea of the classic minotaur - a man with a bull's head - into a man/woman of the Third Millennium with a sheep's head, but, as the title recalls, with the character of a hyena. The idea is to stage a sort of party, a rave, in which a small group of people appear in carefree worldly action. So much so as to lose control, and in doing so reveal the deepest part of themselves. The authors are asking us to try and understand who these contemporary minotaurs really are. A group of chosen ones? Cowardly, spoiled and powerful men and women?
The choreography makes the five dancers coexist on the stage without ever touching each other, in compliance with the current regulations against Covid, as evidence of the historical moment in which the piece was created. Everyone on stage will wear a mask, for dramatic purposes, a mask, which is a real cast of the dancers' heads, with sheep-like features, a figment of the imagination of the Bulgarian artist Nadezhda Simeonova, creator of this camouflage.
