
with Damiano Ottavio Bigi & Lukasz Przytarski
sound composition David Blouin
collaborative light designer Evina Vassilakopoulou & Amador Artiga Tuset /David Blouin
photo and video @velislavvelislav, Amador Artiga Tuset, Pavlos Kosmidis
co-produced by TORINODANZA Festival / Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale, ONE DANCE WEEK Festival – Plovdiv, Compagnia Degli Istanti
with the support of 2WORKS / DIMITRIS PAPAIOANNOU, il FUNARO / Pistoia, Fabbrica Europa / PARC Performing Arts Research Centre – Firenze, LAVANDERIA A VAPORE centro di residenza per la danza – Torino, Teatro-Biblioteca Quarticciolo – Roma, NRW Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft
Selected Project NID Platform 2021 – Open Studios | NID Platform 2023 – Guest production
[ita] Un Discreto Protagonista è il racconto di un istante, l’istante del tempo che va fuori dai cardini, o prima ancora del tempo, in cui equilibrio e simmetria si rompono per dare inizio al tempo.
Nessun bang, nessun rumore, solo una temporanea vibrazione dell’aria.
La simmetria si frantuma, e presenze sfocate si sovrappongono, si mescolano, si tramutano e cambiano in una espansione costante.
Sono resti e frammenti sparsi, che tentano di ricomporsi generando relazioni sempre diverse.
All’interno di una pagina bianca, ha preso forma una narrazione, che va al di là di una storia visibile: danza pura e frammenti narrativi irrompono attraverso immagini legate ad alcune fra le storie più antiche, come pezzi di un’unica storia.
[eng] Un Discreto Protagonista is a story of an instant, an instant of the time that is out of joint, or before the time itself, in which balance and symmetry get broken to let the time start.
No bang, no sound, just a temporary vibration in the air.
Symmetry shatters, and unfocused presences overlap, and mingle. They change and turn into a constant expansion.
They are remains and scattered fragments which in a fluid space try to reassemble in shapes dictated by geometric relationships creating always different ones.
A narrative has taken shape within a blank page, which goes beyond a visible story. Pure dance and narration fragments explode across images related to some of the most ancient stories as if they were bits of a single one.
▸ trailer
▸ tour
23 April 2022
ITALY / Anghiari / Anghiari Dance Hub / Avant-première
1 June 2022
BULGARIA / Plovdiv / One Dance Week Festival / World Première
10 June 2022
CZECHIA / Prague / Tanec Praha International Dance Festival
14 June 2022
CZECHIA / Plzeň / Tanec Praha International Dance Festival
16 June 2022
CZECHIA / Pardubice / Tanec Praha International Dance Festival
16 e 17 September 2022
ITALY / Torino / Torinodanza Festival
21 September 2022
ITALY / Firenze / Festival Fabbrica Europa
17 December 2022
ITALY / Cremona / Teatro Amilcare Ponchielli
31 January 2023
ITALY / Pistoia / Teatro Manzoni
30 August 2023
ITALY / Cagliari / NID Platform
2 September 2023
POLAND / Gdansk / Gdansk Dance Festival
7 September 2023
LUXEMBOURG / Luxembourg / Aerowaves Dance Festival Luxembourg
12 October 2023
ITALY / Gorizia / Visavì Gorizia Dance Festival
▸ press
« Un Discreto Protagonista reveals a poetic map of bodies within a process of abstraction that suspends time. And it expands it in the dance of the two great dancers ».
« In the condensation of gestural vibrations, physical reverberations, oscillations and collisions, postures on the ground in the intertwining legs or like deer fighting against each other, Bigi and Przytarski are particles and antiparticles, which expand and regroup, attract and repel, transforming themselves. They take shapes and consistency of humans in the reflex of the now tenuous, nebulous, impalpable or concrete light, which greets them, keeps them united and distinct, a light that sends back the energy released by themselves ».
[Giuseppe Distefano / Exibart – Read more]
« We are being carried away by the poetic alchemy of two men: on stage, the power of Damiano Ottavio Bigi and the elegance of Lukasz Przytarski. Two entities attract and contrast each other; it could be a story of love, brotherhood, or a breakdown starting from the same personality.
[… ] Bigi and Przytarski dance with their whole body, from fingers to toes, up to the head, in contagious ecstasy ».
[Andrea Pocosgnich / Teatro e Critica – Read more]
« A gathering of glances, which say without asking, and of hands, which greet without answering. Damiano Ottavio Bigi and the Polish Lucasz Przytarski dance and run into each other in a totally white environment. Scandicci’s Teatro Studio is a blank page that holds the drawing in the becoming of trajectories that immediately elude, expand and thin out. They’re both looking for each other but still cannot find each other. It is the mirror play of two bodies forming the score of a joint will: to meet. Un Discreto Protagonista, conceived and directed by Alessandra Paoletti and Bigi himself (dancer of Pina Bausch and Dimitris Papaioannou), is that moment long built and longed for. We are faced with a work that makes perfection its colour, its burning. Bigi and Przytarski each have their style, but, at the same time, their different nuances reconcile the reflection of the quality of the partner’s approach: it is as if both are also an echo of what they have understood each other of other. The light that catches them close has almost impressionistic characters and tones, from Monet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe to Renoir’s Bal au Moulin de la Galette. It is a vivid atmosphere, which, however, conceals an inextinguishable frenzy. After that moment, the dancers separate again: they cannot be two, united and together, over time, but always and only one. One plus one. On the way to the encounter, Un Discreto Protagonista discovers its legacy, the wound that torments the space between every moment: the loneliness ».
[Matteo Brighenti / Hystrio – 1/2023]