Country of Origin Italy
Description Les Noces and Petrušhka, two signature works of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes set to visionary scores by Stravinsky, undergo a 21st-century re-imagining by Mauro Bigonzetti, artistic director of Italy’s Compagnia Aterballetto. Known for a repertory ranging from neoclassical to avant-garde to postmodern, the troupe moves among multiple genres with astonishing ease and grace.
Obligation, custom, and compliance, the salient themes of Les Noces, first choreographed by Bratislava Nijinska in 1923, come through loud and clear as envisioned by Bigonzetti. Echoing and expanding upon Nijinska’s severe geometric patterns—bodies in service to the form—and the austere black-and-white décor of the original, this new Les Noces packs a serious kinetic punch. A brilliant treatise on chaos and insurrection choreographed in 1911 by Michael Fokine, Bigonzetti’s version of Petrušhka is set in a clothing shop. The Harlequin has been reincarnated as a young tough. The object of his love, a pitiless ballerina-cum-Barbie doll, treats him no better than the crowd that assaults him.
Sensitively re-conceived by Bigonzetti, and performed with alacrity by the excellent dancers, soloists all, these two works are the perfect progeny: proud of their parentage, yet unmistakably a part of the here and now.
Identifier 2005f.01060
