Dance Review: Balletto Teatro di Torino, Where the Wild Things Really Are

The wild things are not at your local movie theater, they are at The Joyce Theater through ready to haunt this city with movement that transcends time and space, bodies as majestic as supermodels, and a presence as enigmatic as all of your uncharted desires. Hailing from Italy, Balletto Teatro di Torino (BTT) knocks it out of the park on their first voyage to the states with Primo Toccare, an evening length work broken into two pieces - Act I - White and Act II - Black aptly name for the costume choices.

Choreographer Matteo Levaggi and designers Samantha Stella and Sergio Frazzingaro create a playground for the eight dancers through an insatiable exploration of sculptural architecture and a glass sarcophagus filled with a silver skull and candid lilies. A former dancer with BTT himself, Levaggi strives to keep the company’s choreography anchored in technique while delving deeply into experimental movement. He succeeds.

White begins with Yi Chun Lui, easily the company’s most jaw-dropping performer, walking onto the stage to the sounds of dramatic growls. Despite her petite stature she is anything but diminutive as she carves the space with glorious undulations... Blink and you’ll miss the voyages to the ground and back up again without any percussive peeps! Lui seems to have invested in a lifetime supply of time that she luxuriously wields through the expansive stage with in a white leotard so sheer I feel like an anatomy student with the greatest visual aid money can buy.

When joined by a second dancer, the synchronicity of movement astounds me. Paired with the growling music that more closely resembles a soundscape, these dancers hearts beat with the same pulse, with the same abstract rhythm that takes them from one side of the stage to the next as if in flight. The flight is interrupted with stillness as three men enter and all of the big guns are pulled out. Women are being carried in full splits, the women lift the men, the mouths whisper words I cannot nor am I meant to understand, and all I can do is feel as though I’m in the presence of aliens - the good E.T. kind- that allow you to feel and see things you never acknowledged in the world. These dancers allow your mind to focus on the very thing they are there to do – amaze you!

Before long all eight dancers take control of the stage and each means business. Moving in a tight knit circle seemingly magnetized to each other, I begin to see the work collaboration of Levaggi, Stella and Frazzingaro. They have replaced the need for intensely structured sets with bodies constructed better than all the statues in the land. The music plays as loud as Abercrombie and Fitch speakers play in a residential mall where the patrons want to drown out the annoyances of their modern lives. Transforming from unison, to boy vs girl, to quartet vs. quartet and so no and so forth, their impeccable technique as a company resonates louder than the percussive music and more visible than the hipbones and ribcages that decorate the stage like stars decorate a Maine skyline.

The second piece, Black does away with the impulse buy oriented Abercrombie-esque music and replaces it with achingly beautiful strings that tear at the strings of my heart. One page of my notes simply reads, “this shit is the real deal.” I hesitate to write more knowing that the aforementioned statement sums it up best. The level of artistry in this piece is so brilliant and so willingly gives to the audience that each person surely knows the depth of their luck in reserving a seat. The next time they come your way, make sure you try your luck and check them out!

iDANZ Critix Corner
Official Dance Review by Eileen Elizabeth
Performance: Balletto Teatro di Torino
Venue: The Joyce Theater, New York City
Date: October 13, 2009
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