[purgatorio] Popopera

Emio Greco, Pieter C. Scholten as well as the troupe they founded a dozen years ago lay claim to the age of maturity. Located in Amsterdam, the Emio Greco | PC company tours more or less everywhere in the world. But the spirit of experimentation has not gone away and the institution has continued its international forum initiatives, the Accademia Mobile, proposing training sessions and teaching, inviting troupes, publishing a review, books, a DVD and programmatic texts. Emio Greco, an Italian dancer and choreographer, and Pieter C. Scholten, a Dutch choreographer, first proposed a trilogy, Bianco, Rosso, Extra Dry (1996-2000), Emio Greco's body being the central subject. Then the Double Points series (begun in 1998), short experimental pieces, was responsible for them being produced in many theatres and festivals in Europe. Lastly, Hell, a show premiered at the Festival Montpellier Danse in 2006, the result of four years of work, was the first of 4 sections inspired by The Divine Comedy by Dante. [purgatorio], which naturally follows, is divided into two parts, Popopera, which “is still a little bit of hell”, and In visione, which “is already a little bit of paradise”. Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten presented Double Points: Hell in the Sujets à Vif program at the Festival d'Avignon in 2005.

Often, looking at the dancers in [purgatorio] popopera, one has the impression of confronting the legendary hydra, a monstrous creature with multiple heads, being both one and many, moving together but each part of whose body seems autonomous, a strange movement blending the general intention and specific rhythms. The reason is that this body with seven heads is both very united and highly differentiated. It moves together, provided with broad arm gestures, collapses collectively, brings itself back up in the same manner, spiked with electric guitar necks that make it look like a rock group while strengthening its heroic and martial appearance. But it is also very individualized through each dancer's personality and body. All around the stage, keeping its distance with the beast, but sometimes mixing with it in disturbing fusions, a singer walks, with her golden voice, her classical airs, her folk songs, her lamé dress. The omnipresent object of temptation in [purgatorio] popopera is the electric guitar, always on stage, taken in hand, then continuously carried and played in the second part of the show. The music by the American composer Michael Gordon seems to engender poses, gestures, figures, movements, as so many affects and sound moods that would take on successive states of incarnation. The dance proposed is as technical as it is physical, brilliant and exhausting. A desired trial that makes these guitar heroes exemplary beings of purgatory: torn apart, courageous, full of hope, but doomed to wander in tragedy.

chorégraphie, lumières, conception sonore: Emio Greco, Pieter C. Scholten
composition musicale: Michael Gordon
musique et danse: Ty Boomershine, Victor Callens, Vincent Colomes, Nicola Monaco, Marie Sinnaeve, Suzan Tunca
chanteuse: Michaela Riener
scénographie: Marc Warning
lumières: Henk Danner
vidéo: Joost Rekveld
costumes: Clifford Portier
production: Gerco de Vroeg

production: Emio Greco | PC, coproduction Holland Festival (Amsterdam), Théâtre de la Ville-Paris, Maison de la Culture d'Amiens –Centre de création
et de production, Festival d'Avignon, Teatro Duse (Bologne), Torino Danza (Turin), The Joyce Theater's Stephen and Cathy Weinroth Fund for New York,
Clarice Smith Center for the Performing Arts (Maryland)
avec l'aide de: MAPP International Productions (New York) et ATER (Modène)
avec le soutien de l'Ambassade du Royaume des Pays-Bas à Paris, du Fonds néerlandais des arts de la scène et du Theater Instituut Nederland