Date:
8:30 PM, Sunday October 30, 2011 Place: the Sala
Vanni (concert hall), Piazza del Carmine, Florence, Italy Facebook
Event page
and . . .
Dates: 9PM, Friday, December
2, 2011 and 9PM, Saturday, December 3, 2011 Place: the Teaotro
Cantiere Florida, Florence, Italy more
information
choreography:
Keith
Ferrone original music: Andrea Portera, Naamleela
Free Jones, Matteo Nativo (played in collaboration with Ensemble Nuovo
Contrappunto) art and text: Adi Da Samraj "still life": Mario
Mariotti light design: Jean Paul Carradori costumes: Mirko Bottai scenic
design: Serena Ferrone artistic direction: Marga Nativo Ensemble Nuovo Contrappunto
direction: Mario Ancillotti "Where artistic expression
and a message for peace become one."
Not-Two Is Peace is an
explosive multi-media performance involving dance, music, and art. The
Florence Dance Company renews its fruitful collaboration with international
artist and philosopher, Adi Da
Samraj, this time inspired by His book, Not-Two
Is Peace. In this book, Adi Da Samraj presents an approach to world peace
that is based on the presumption of prior unity, and that advocates a disposition
of non-separation, enabling the collective transcendence of global conflicts. For
this occasion, choreographer Keith Ferrone, along with award-winning composer,
Andrea
Portera, and lighting designer, Jean Paul Carradori (working with the exceptional
musicians of the Ensemble
Nuovo Contrappunto) offer a debut that includes, among other things, a special
cameo, "Still Life", by the Florentine artist, Mario Mariotti (1936-1997),
famed for his amazing hand painting art. The ballet theater event will also
include Naamleela
Free Jones playing a beautiful three-movement piano piece that she composed
specifically for this ballet, live on stage, surrounded by dancers with carefully
chosen and sequenced Images (selected by Ruy
Carpenter) that communicate the message of Not-Two Is Peace
through the medium of art. (click
picture for enlargement)
Pictures
of the Florence Dance Company rehearsing and performing Not-Two Is Peace
Rehearsal
Rehearsal
Rehearsal
Performance Photo
courtesy Naamleela Free Jones (click picture for enlargement)
Performance Photo
courtesy Naamleela Free Jones (click picture for enlargement)
Performance (click
picture for enlargement)
Performance Photo
courtesy Naamleela Free Jones (click picture for enlargement)
Performance Photo
courtesy Naamleela Free Jones (click picture for enlargement)
Performance Photo
courtesy Naamleela Free Jones (click picture for enlargement)
Performance (click
picture for enlargement)
Performance (click
picture for enlargement)
Performance (click
picture for enlargement)
Performance Photo
courtesy Naamleela Free Jones (click picture for enlargement)
Responses
to performance (click picture for enlargement)
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Review
of Not-Two Is PeaceMary Murfin Bayley
In
Not-Two Is Peace, based on the book and artistic images
of the same name by Adi Da Samraj, choreographer Keith Ferrone takes the images
of Adi Da, with their complex geometric shapes, arrays of color, and meditative
layers of meaning, and gives them theatrical shape.
There
are historic precedents for inspired collaborations between choreographer and
painter, such as Chagall with Massine or Rauschenberg with Trisha Brown. In his
third major work inspired by Adi Da (the first was the 2009 "Four
Seasons", the second, 2010 "Divina.com"
- Dante/Adi Da Samraj/ Florence), Ferrone builds further on this collaborative
tradition. With the use of light, sculpture, video, and music he converts the
medium of painting into a dynamic new form. With Jean Paul
Carradori's lighting design and Ruy Carpenter's video, Adi Da's images are projected
not only on the set but on both sides of the auditorium, thereby surrounding the
audience with the artist's world of light, color and contemplativeness. The music
by Andrea Portera, played beautifully the night I saw it by the Ensemble Nuovo
Contrappunto (under the direction of Mario Ancillotti), brought further color
and shape to the dance. The interaction of dancers, with color,
costume, light and set are specific and evocative. The costumes, designed by Mirko
Bottai, are sometimes used to suggest altered states of being, enlightenment perhaps,
or the body after death. Performance (click
picture for enlargement)
In one section when the dancers
strip down onstage, they imbue the bundles of clothes in their hands with a sense
of deep tenderness. Slowly they drop the clothes they have just removed over the
edge of the stage as if dropping something living into a ditch. When a few minutes
later the dancers arrange themselves in a large basket structure (a metal sculpture
entitled "Still Life" by artist Mario Mariotti), their intertwined limbs and the
yellow light that plays over their sprawled shapes makes us think of executed
bodies in a pit, or heaped on a cart, a horrifying and powerful image of war.
Those clothes that have just been dropped so reluctantly over the edge become
part of the horror; Ferrone doesn't shy away from this grisly image. He leaves
us to look at the perfectly still bodies for several minutes while Andrea Portera's
lush score speaks to us with depth and sadness. The transition
that follows brings a startling contrast, leading us into a sequence that becomes
an exhilarating evocation of joy over horror. The music turns light, flute-like
and hopeful. A large background image of Adi Da's image, "Not-Two Is Peace",
is revealed with its dense array of bright colors and written words. The dancers
on stage clothe themselves in bright orange costumes while files of other dancers
wearing white walk into the audience carrying wooden crates and handing out oranges.
As audience members accept the oranges and begin to peel them, the cheerful scent
of citrus becomes part of the brightness. The color orange is given the shape
of another sense. It is an original, visceral evocation of happiness. Ferrone's
movement vocabulary, like his sense of theater, is inclusive and varied. It is
primarily classically based (the Florence Dance Company Dancers are ballet trained),
but is also purely "post-modern" in its variety, including folkloric elements,
contemporary pedestrian gestures, and references to various ethnic dance forms.
Ferrone uses the full range of movement and rhythm, from expansive buoyant leaps
to tiny psychological tics such as flicking or shaking. When a dancer at one point
takes a marker and writes a phrase over and over again on the projected painting,
we are as caught by the vivid attack of her body's line and the movement of her
arm as we are by the words she writes. Performance
In
the second half of the ballet, entitled "Peace Is Peace That Is
Peace", composer Naamleela Free Jones plays her original composition on an onstage
piano. Dressed in white like the dancers, her presence became an essential element
of the work. Performance
This
section felt more abstracted and purely geometric, as if the dancers had moved
into a mystical or cosmic realm. The central image was of a circle, sphere or
planet. This shape, reflected in video images and light, was a repeated motif
of the movement. The dancers circled and spiraled, both through space but also
in the shaping of their own bodies, reflecting the interlocking hoops of Adi Da's
projected image. Performance (click
picture for enlargement)
In the final image of the
evening, the dancers form into a simple circle. Then they slowly open it out to
include the other artists, musicians, and designers. It is a beautiful curtain
call, and as these individuals come onstage in ones and twos and join the circle,
it becomes a simple and satisfying dance in itself. The final moment leaves a
strong impression of the ways in which the meaning of both life and of art are
found in community and connection. (Perhaps the "one-ness" implied in the name
"Not-Two Is Peace.") Performance (click
picture for enlargement)
Ferrone's collaboration
with Adi Da raised (at least for me) questions about the relationship of art to
philosophy and spirituality. Adi Da Samraj was a mystic and philosopher as well
as an artist, and this element is caught and conveyed with texture and clarity
in Ferrone's work. It is one of the pleasures of good dance that it is complete
in itself and does not need any meaning other than the dancer in space. When it
is linked to the vision of other artists — as it is here with Adi Da's images,
with Carradori's light, Carpenter's videos, and the music of Portera and Free
Jones — dance becomes one of the most potent and exhilarating art forms
available to us. Dance is simply human beings moving through
light. Music is time and melody. Artistic images are colors and forms in space.
What these things mean when they are playing out in a theatrical work is whatever
the viewer or listener experiences. Whether these forms are legitimately used
to express a religious conviction is a different question. They have done so in
the past. But what we are looking for as contemporary viewers and theater goers
is to experience these visions, or even these religious revelations ourselves,
by focusing on the art form. When we look at Adi Da's work, we do not need to
know that he was a spiritual teacher. This is an irrelevance and a distraction.
All we need is to be open to the work of art and the vision will (or will not)
come through to us. In this work, the revelation of peace
is experienced because Ferrone has the courage to leave the bodies on stage in
absolute stillness for an unexpectedly long time. This gives the movement and
light that follows its joyful vision of a world without war and hatred. Just so,
his use of circles and circular movement creates a vision of oneness. Each form
of art offers its own enlightenments. The revelations we get from Adi Da's work
are because he created images of color and form. There may be other revelations
to be gotten from his writings and teachings, but the revelations of art can only
be gotten from the art itself. A work of art can't be defined or meanings parsed
by anyone other than the person in the audience or in front of the artwork who
experiences it. This is where the visions come. Keith Ferrone's "Not-Two Is
Peace" at Florence Dance Center opens the possibility for us. Performance Photo
courtesy Naamleela Free Jones (click picture for enlargement)
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