Danzare Isolati. Logiche di affezione e pratiche discorsive urbane in Sieni, Sciarroni e Di Stefano

Abstract

The notion of “building blocks”, here, has a double meaning. On the one hand, it is conceived in epistemic, archaeological, and temporal terms; on the other hand, in architectural and spatial ones. As an adjective, it indicates something set apart, separated from a group or a set of elements, therefore referring to the time of solitude and exclusion from social engagement, in contrast with the time of collectivity. As a noun, it relates to a building or a group of buildings surrounded by streets, conveying the idea of an inscribed space. Dancing as blocks alludes to a particular praxis of engagement with alterity through choreography, both in temporal terms (isolation and singularity in relation to a group) and in spatial terms (the relationship at the margins with the remote). It is not just about a strategy of composition, but a hermeneutic paradigm, a method to read the action. Moreover, affect intervenes in this procedure as a dynamic of desire that, within an archipelago-system, determines meaning, relationships, and generates intensity. The essay aims to draw out how the building blocks choreographic strategy can shape and occupy the performative space. This strategy seems to affirm itself as cultural form of the archipelago in some recent contemporary performances: staging the campo in Agorà Tutti by Virgilio Sieni (2013); Alessandro Sciarroni’s work on juggling UNTITLED_I will be there when you die (2013); the deconstruction of the colonialist structure through geographic and/or cartographic actions by Michele Di Stefano in Il giro del mondo in 80 giorni for MK (2011), and in Upper East Side for Aterballetto (2014).