Anthony of Egypt, a hermit who withdrew to the desert of the Thebaid, is joined by a disciple of his, the young Hilarion of Gaza, who asks him several questions that trouble him; however, his master’s answers, rather than guiding him, leave him bewildered. The desert offers no footholds, and the only things to be found are the products of one’s own mind, yet this is not an exclusively personal space, inhabited as it is by images of all kinds coming from the past or by fomented phantasmagorias. The anchorites of the past understood this well, finding in the desert the very arena in which to fight the siege of swarming, automatic mental images, and to bend their thoughts to the harsh reality of that place. The desert reveals an anticipated view of the end of all things, and the dust that remains appears boundless. There is nothing to see and nothing moves: everything has already passed. All that remains is the hope of finding something new solely within oneself. The instinct to create something that is not there reveals the need to represent the world, and not merely to use it. Claudia Castellucci / Compagnia Mòra in L’Infinito Carnale – Dialogo tra Antonio d’Egitto e Ilarione di Gaza stages a duel between dance and the desert—with its poverty of temporal, panoramic, and material variations—reviving the ancient expressive form of pantomime, made evident here by a dialogue that corresponds to the movements of the two performers in the guise of music.
After studying the visual arts, in 1981 Claudia Castellucci, along with her brother Romeo, Chiara Guidi and others, founded the Societas Raffaello Sanzio, a theatre company that became well-known worldwide for its idea of theatre predominantly based on the force of the visual, plastic and sound arts. When, in 2006, the artists belonging to the company began to undertake separate research, Claudia Castellucci continued her relationship with the plastic arts by producing works linked to a philosophical practice based on rhythm. This also led her to found several schools with an ancient inspiration, i.e. referring to the pleasure of knowledge rather than training: Theatrical school of the descent (1989-93); Stoa (2003-07) and Mòra (2015-19). In 2011, she led the École du rythme in Bordeaux, during the Urban Art Biennial. Since 2014, she has been directing Rhythmic Movement Exercises worldwide, after an initial experience in Athens. Her published texts include: Uovo di bocca (Bollati Boringhieri, 2000), Setta Scuola di tecnica drammatica (Quodlibet, 2015), and Bollettini della Danza (Edizioni Sete, 2019). In 2020 she received the Silver Lion at the Venice Dance Biennale.
Mòra is the name of the slightest pause, in the nomenclature used by Augustine, that separates two sounds. It is thus the origin of rhythm, which has been at the centre of Claudia Castellucci’s interests both in her theatrical production, within the Societas Raffaello Sanzio, and in the Schools of Rhythmic Movement she has created. The Mòra School (2015-19) is precisely what led to the birth of Compagnia Mòra, a stable group of dancers who base their interpretation on a relationship of mutual trust, which reveals their individual personalities: Sissj Bassani, Silvia Ciancimino, Guillermo de Cabanyes, René Ramos, Francesca Siracusa, Pier Paolo Zimmermann. This Company has performed Towards the species, a dance modelled on the metre of archaic Greek poetry and the movement of horses; At the beginning of the city of Rome, on the first social transactions of humanity when dealing with life in a mass society; The treatment of the waves, a dance based on the ‘spectral’ sound of bells, i.e., prolonged in a time beyond measure; and Physics of the harsh communion, constructed on Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’Oiseaux, with a live piano performance. On this occasion, in 2020, Claudia Castellucci received the Silver Lion award for the Dance Section of the Venice Biennale directed by Marie Chouinard. In 2021, The new Habit, a dance inspired by the orthodox chants of the 16th century Znamenny liturgical tradition, was performed live with choirs from St Petersburg or Sofia. The foremost feature of the Mòra Company lies in the emphasis it gives to the temporal aspect of choreography, leading to an exact replica of the musical patterns. And yet, the strict correspondence between gestures and sound cannot be reduced to a mere synchrony. The dance shapes time through rhythm, especially by studying the part that often remains in the shadows: rests, and the passage from one figure to the next. This interest shifts the interpretation towards a gymnastic behaviour, that calls upon the need to make decisions, at each moment, truly and in the present, in a flagrancy which makes artificial actions become physically true.
performers Sissj Bassani, Pier Paolo Zimmermann
dialogue, choreography and scenes Claudia Castellucci
sound and musical composition Stefano Bartolini
acting of the dialogue Adele Masciello, Pier Paolo Zimmermann
lights Gianni Staropoli
technique and adaptation Francesca Di Serio
epilogue costumes Haimana, Moldova
organisation and distribution Camilla Ferrazzi
production Teatro Metastasio di Prato; Societas, Cesena
Claudia Castellucci / Compagnia Mòra
ph. Luca Del Pia