Stella

Notes of the show<>

The "number one statement" of the Red Brigades was found in Rome by a journalist from the "Messaggero" notified by telephone. It is around midday on Saturday 18 March, two days after Moro's kidnapping. In an orange commercial-sized envelope, left on top of a passport-sized photographic machine located in an underpass in Largo Argentina, there are five copies of the press release and a Polaroid photo portraying Moro, in shirtsleeves, sitting underneath. a flag with the five-pointed star and the words "Red Brigades".

This is what the choreographer Padovani tells us in his new Stella. A show that marks an important moment in Padovani's artistic research, a show where the maturity of the creator, the in-depth research on the topic, the experience of the choreographer (then a university student in the midst of fighting and terrorism) are present, strong, they become matter shaped through the bodies and voices of the two masterful interpreters, Roberta Piazza and Andrea Rizzo. With them we enter a hideout of Red Brigades members, that hideout... an interior scene inhabited and moved by intense emotions and moments of great humanity and poetry, a warm atmosphere made of illusions and projections, suggested with great skill by the costume designer Lucia Lapolla.

Duration 50 minutes

Credits<>

Choreography and direction Luciano Padovani
by and with Luciano Padovani, Roberta Piazza and Andrea Rizzo
Critical view Mauro Zocchetta
Lighting Thomas Heuger
Costumes Lucia Lapolla
A Naturalis Labor Company production
Co-production AbanoDanza Festival 2024
With the support of Mic / Veneto Region / Arco Danza / Municipality of Vicenza

Teaser<>

Press<>

“In this work by the choreographer Luciano Padovani (who, sitting in the background, embodies the now iconic image of the prisoner political leader) you can perceive in the air the tension and drama of a lived story, told and visually framed from an angle different from the usual narration of a remote event, reviewed instead as if through the lens of an objective capable of making material and gestural the most impalpable feelings and torments typical of an era of great impulses and ideological battles. Being able to move and retrace this entire path to backwards, it was a wonderful and exciting experience.”
Pier Luigi Gentile
 

Danza&Danza/ Maria Luisa Buzzi
At the AbanoDanza festival between utopias, new heroes and dances in the wind

The kidnapping of Aldo Moro, The Red Brigades, political passion, the revolutionary utopia, the youth of 1978: Luciano Padovani could not have found a more sensitive topic for his new work Stella. Either because terrorism has unfortunately returned to occupy the news at an international level, or due to the rise of new extremisms, or due to the political disaffection characteristic of our times. Going back to the years of lead, and putting them into dance, could be very slippery. Instead, Stella (from the symbol of the Red Brigades) is a successful work although it leaves any consideration on the consequences, and victims, of the subversive actions pending.

It stops at the news, cinematically bringing to the stage the 'family' dimension of the hideout in which Aldo Moro was held for fifty-five long days of captivity before being murdered. Through effective dance and a coherent dramaturgical structure, Padovani tells the love and political passion of the Red Brigades couple, played by the excellent Roberta Piazza and Andrea Rizzo; translates into movement the political fervor and the discussions, the enthusiasm and even the argument that arose between the two at the moment of the most tragic decision: what to do with the hostage. Aldo Moro (Padovani himself) watches the life of his captors sitting with his back to him at the back of the scene: practically immobile for the entire duration of the play, he surprisingly makes a compassionate gesture towards his captors. In the essential scenography composed of a table, a carpet-bed, a radio for the news and a typewriter for typing out the press releases, the choreographer, who was at the University at the time of the events, seems here moved by a sort of nostalgia for a youth fervent with revolutionary passion, intent on pursuing ideals (it doesn't matter if they are right or wrong). A courageous work that the AbanoDanza Festival, directed by Padovani himself, presented in its national premiere....



                        

                    

                                                
                    

                        
Technical details<>

                        
                        

                            
Choreography and direction Luciano Padovani
Production 2024
Staff: 3 dancers + 1 technician
Tout public / A creation suitable to be proposed for high schools
Only for stage theatre 
Complete video of the show available on request