Ginevra: the research work within “Archives and Health”

Thursday, May 23rd, 9:00 PM – Ginevra
Thursday, May 30th, 9:00 PM – Correspondances
Foundry – via della Costituzione 39, Reggio Emilia
Free admission
Reservation required: Tel. 0522 452182 or info@liberauniversitacrostolo.it (priority for LUC members)

Ginevra – May 23rd

Performative outcome of the workshop “In Search of the Lost Gesture”
curated by CCN / Aterballetto and LUC-Libera Università del Crostolo
as part of the project OVER DANCE curated by CCN/Aterballetto and Fondazione Ravasi Garzanti

Ginevra is the result of research work based on the encounter between the Pre-texts protocol, a creative process based on reading, arts, and creativity to support people’s well-being and mental health, and dance as a tool for longevity and quality of life. During the Over Dance project, the Harvard protocol was embraced by CCN/Aterballetto and developed with expressive dance, starting from the shared reading of a document from 1603, from the Inquisition Archive, now preserved at the State Archive of Modena. The dossier, labeled “ASMO, Inquisition, b. 22, fasc 20, with attached confiscated magical writings,” recounts the story of a woman, Ginevra Gamberini, subjected to trial for witchcraft. But Ginevra is much more than a character living through the darkest history of modern age and Christianity.

Ginevra is every woman who has been forced to live in darkness by patriarchy. She is every woman who has been humiliated and whose freedoms have been trampled. She is every resistor and fighter against violence and oppression. Yet, Ginevra is a woman and a mother. The work done on this text is the result of a deep, embodied delve into the experiences of a woman’s body and intelligence, a victim of irrationality, superstition, and violence capable of rising and elevating itself, to envision a new ideal of humanity.

The show Ginevra is part of the cultural offerings of the social prescription system of the “Archives and Health” network.

Directed by Arturo Cannistrà

Original Music by Francesco Germini and Various Artists

Texts by Sara Uboldi

Performers: Liliana Bedogni, Antonella Bigarelli, Claudia Carri, Simona Chiari, Sonia Cosmi, Morena Gilioli, Milena Guidetti, Isa Ligabue, Barbara Quinti, Grazia Raffaelli, Raffaella Romanini, Brunetta Schiaffonati, Marina Simoncini, Manuela Sturloni, Meris Zini

Reciting Voice: Claudia Carri

Show included in the Social Prescription Program of the “Archives and Health” network:

Pre-Texts Social Lab
Pre-Texts at Cultural Agents Inc.
CCW-Cultural Welfare Center
Archives and Health
State Archive of Modena
MaMiMò Teatro Piccolo Orologio
Libera Università Crostolo APS
Farmacie Comunali Riunite
Centro Coreografico Nazionale / Aterballetto

The Pre-Texts protocol is a generative resource developed by Professor Doris Sommer of Harvard University, at the Department of Romance Languages, introduced in Italy by Professor Pierluigi Sacco of the University of Chieti-Pescara. The spread of the method is promoted by NGO, Cultural Agents, at Harvard University itself, and then introduced in Italy by the University of Chieti-Pescara, through a national social innovation laboratory extended to Reggio Emilia as well, through the activities of Sara Uboldi, Pre-texts researcher and trainer.

At the core of this protocol is the idea of ​​recovering the sense of learning and social integration through the creative and expressive resources of the participants, with significant impacts in terms of supporting mental health, in cases of depression, anxiety, and specific psychiatric disorders, even of medium-high severity.

Born in Messina, he trained at the National Academy of Dance. From 1980 to 1984, he joined the ballet company of the Teatro Comunale di Firenze directed by E. Poliakov as a soloist and principal dancer, performing choreographies by E. Poliakov, J. Russillo, L. Massine, M. Petipa, G. Balanchine, M. Pokine, M. Béjart, dancing alongside stars such as R. Nureyev, C. Fracci, P. Dupond, M. Fontaine. In 1984, he joined Aterballetto, directed by A. Amodio and since 1998 by M. Bigonzetti. Since 2003, he has been the artistic director of special projects at the National Dance Foundation – Aterballetto Company. In 2003, he began active collaboration with FNASD within the Read to Dance project, bringing educational performances throughout Italy, such as Cinderella, The Magic Flute, Peter and the Wolf, Pinocchio, The Little Prince, The Poet of the Piano, Homage to Arturo Toscanini. In 2001, he received the Urban Dance Lifetime Achievement Award from the Calabria Region, in 2010 he was awarded the Grand Prix Giuliana Pensi for audience development activities in Italy, the Rome in Dance award in 2014 in Fiuggi, and the Rome Prize.

Sara Uboldi conducts research on the theme of assessing the social impacts of culture, in collaboration with the University of Chieti and Pescara, the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, and the Institute of Cultural Heritage Sciences of the National Research Council, within the Social Prescription Network “Archives and Health.” As a Pre-texts trainer, she is also involved in the design, experimentation, and dissemination of good practices and international cultural protocols. For the Centro Coreografico Nazionale and the Libera Università del Crostolo, she has been engaged, for the third consecutive year, in measuring and evaluating the benefits of dance workshops in support of active aging.

Correspondances – May 30th

Performative outcome of the workshop “In Search of the Lost Gesture”
curated by CCN / Aterballetto and LUC-Libera Università del Crostolo
as part of the project OVER DANCE curated by CCN/Aterballetto and Fondazione Ravasi Garzanti

What is offered to the stage are bodies á la recherche of correspondences between the self and being in the world. Traveling bodies that recompose the most complex of puzzles: that of our lives. How important it is to gather and seize the correspondences of pieces of ourselves and how important is the road, the journey to be taken! The chair is the compass of this journey, it is the anchor that prevents us from floating in this world like evanescent gas particles. It is the island from which we depart to explore together with the language of the body, accompanied and stimulated by words that trace possible trajectories. Words chosen and born from the journey.

What is offered to the audience is a humanity traveling along the most linear, jagged, and often rough trajectories of its existence. From the frenzy and also from the strength of an overly full daily life towards a new space of encounter with the otherness of oneself. A human journey, therefore, not just any journey. The gestures, the scenic rituals, the music are seeds collected and sown along the way. A body, bodies that make up the Circle that becomes the lung of collective breathing. Moving bodies that are concluded within a golden amulet, a sign of union between soul and body, between beginning and end. Like the divining rod that leads us to rediscover the ritual signs that accompany our humanity: from caves to smartphones.

Arturo Cannistrà and Chantal Masserey

Directed by Arturo Cannistrà

Original Music by Francesco Germini

Music by: Gustave Rudman, Jocelyn Pook, John Adams, Max Richter

Texts by: Mariangela Gualtieri, Ada Luz Márquez, Charles Baudelaire, Alda Merini, Wislawa Szymborska

Amulets: Haibraen arte della saggezza antica by Mirella Visentin

Video Projections: photos by Mariolina Croci and Various Artists

Performers: Paola Albano, Matilde Baraldi, Elisabetta Bonilauri, Antonella Campani, Maria Croci, Maria Gabriella Giudici, Stefania Ilariucci, Chantal Masserey, Paolo Messori, Franca Notari, Emma Olivieri, Maria Cristina Righi, Nila Rossi, Lorella Scotti, Miretta Simonazzi, Mirella Visentin

Published On: 20 May 2024