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Feb 16 - Feb 23,2003 |
Dances of love and temptation
Choreographer Roberto Campanella brings Valentine decorum to performance festival
By Nancy MacLeod
Originally Published: 2003-02-09
For the second consecutive year, EDGEdanceworks and the Chimera Project are presenting Before During After, a four-day festival of duets from 10 choreographers, all of whom are exploring St. Valentine's Day themes. It runs February 6 to 9 the Winchester Street Theatre, 80 Winchester St.
The festival is divided into two programmes. Program A deals with the theme of Love. The pieces, choreographed by artists like EDGEdanceworks founder Tanya Crowder; two-time Dora winner and Across Oceans founder Maxine Heppner; and the critically acclaimed Tedd Robinson and Claudia Moore; are slow to medium in their pacing. Dancers include such noted performers Kate Alton and Eryn Dace Trudell.
Program B delves into the world of Temptation, with faster-paced pieces. The works are choreographed by Crowder; The Chimera Project's Malgorzata Nowacka; teacher/choreographer Karen Kaeja; Keiko Ninomiya; and Allison Rees-Cummings and Andrew Scorer. The work Decorum is choreographed by the renowned dancer/teacher Roberto Campanella.
Not yet 35, the Rome native has carved out a very impressive career in Canada, Italy and abroad. He studied at the Scuola Italiana di Danza Contemporanea and in 1985 joined the Compagnia Italiana di Danza Contemporanea, where he became a principal dancer. In 1993 Campanella joined the National Ballet of Canada, where as a soloist, he danced Mercutio and Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet by Cranko, in Tetley's Rite of Spring and in Balanchine's Theme and Variations. He has worked as a choreographer since 1995, first the National Ballet's Choreographic Workshop. Since then his has met with much success as a choreographer and as a guest teacher, with his activities taking him to Germany, Japan, Korea and Portugal.
"I originally created this work for Ballet Jorgen with Tara Butler and Paul Anthony Chambers, who are part of the company," he explains. Decorum had its very successful premiere in the spring of last year, and Campanella is excited about revisiting it. "It is a loose concept, about the external struggle of a relationship, and the public face you put on. At first I had a Victorian setting more or less. It was obvious in terms of costumes." The idea of putting on a public face worked perfectly set in that uptight and rigid period, but in its remount Campanella is going modern. "This time I decided to show more flesh, more muscles," he says. "I'm very curious to see by modifying it what happens. I like the rush of the risk of it."
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