Spadolini at the Fellini Museum

 

Alberto Spadolini, photo Dora Maar

 

 

In 1978 Marco Travaglini, Alberto Spadolini’s nephew, found a box filled with documents about his uncle. The box was put aside for years but in 2004, Travaglini began analysing those documents and was able to find many more. Quite a few of these documents are stunning photographs of Spadolini mainly in dance poses. Twenty-five of said photographs are now on display at the Fellini Museum in Rimini, Italy. The image chosen for the exhibition advertisement card is by Dora Maar and shows a graceful portrait of Spadolini, with a scarf around his neck and a small sphere in his left hand.

The exhibition opened on 24 March and was due to close on 16 April, but given the good response of the visitors, it has been extended until 1 May. On 30 March, 6 and 13 April the exhibition was also enriched by the screening of two documentaries: 2019 Spadò – Il danzatore nudo by Riccardo de Angelis and Romeo Marconi and 1951 Nous, les gitans by Alberto Spadolini himself.

I went to visit the exhibition on 13 April and was overwhelmed by the beauty of the photographs. Some of them have been published in my book on Spadolini (in Italian) and some in Travaglini’s books on his uncle. I commented the photographs for the visitors present that evening and seeing them all lined up was a feast for the eyes:

There was one of the very few images of Spadolini together with Josephine Baker where Baker is wearing a long tutu and ballet shoes, presumably for her ballet-insipred dances; there were some of the photographs portraying Spadolini as a nude dancer, like the one by Studio Piaz where he stands erect in a particularly virile pose; there was one portraying him in an Oriental costume, what I think might have been the costume for his work Cambodge, inspired by Cambodian culture; there were some dedicated to his Spanish-inspired dances, with a costume recalling that of a torero.

During the guided tour, ph. M. Travaglini

 Spadolini was a music hall dancer in 1930s Paris, but he also tried to move away from the music hall into theatre dance, as it happened with his 1933 Gala de danse, organised together with flamenco dancer Nati Morales.

The 2019 documentary presented a nice picture of Spadolini, with a focus on Travaglini’s 1978 discovery of the box, Spadolini’s ties with Gabiele d’Annunzio and his possible role as a spy during World War II. Here is the trailer (in Italian): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVZlhLCvEgo

Spadolini’s own 1951 documentary was dedicated to Gypsy culture. There he appears in an interesting dance, in one of his almost nude attires. The documentary is also watchable online at the following link (it is in French): https://www.cinematheque.fr/henri/film/116989-nous-les-gitans-alberto-spadolini-1950/

This exhibition is an important event to celebrate Spadolini and his art as a dancer (he was also a painter, actor and a lot more) and I highly recommend it.