Le Palestriti: dance, sport and female chorality

Le Palestriti, photo Luca Del Pia.

There is a rare stunning mosaic in Villa del Casale situated in Piazza Armerina in Sicily. It portrays ten female athletes and reveals that in antiquity women practised different kinds of sport. It is called ‘le Palestriti’ from Latin ‘palestrita’ which means those who in ancient Greece or in Rome fought in the gym’ (from Treccani). Dancer and choreographer Simona Bertozzi, who when she was a child, practiced some sports, saw it and had an epiphany. She saw female strength and power, corality and beauty and decided to create a project around this work.

Part of the project, called Athletes, involved the participation of female dancers, female professional athletes and of non professional women of different body shapes to create a choreographic work where sport and women met and nourished each other.

 

Le Palestriti, photo Luca Del Pia.

The binomial dance and sport is not new. In 1924 Bronislava Nijinska created Le train Bleu for The Ballets Russes, with a scenario written by Jean Cocteau and costumes designed by Coco Chanel. It was inspired by the luxury train that connected Calais–Paris to the Côte d'Azur. Various sports were pictured, like tennis, swimming and weightlifting.

In 1959 Martha Graham and George Balanchine presented their choreographic collaboration in Episodes. In the part created by Graham and dedicated to Mary Queen of Scots, the North American choreographer imagined, among other things, a tennis match between Mary and her cousin and rival Elizabeth.

However, Le Palestriti is something unique. As a dance adaptation of a mosaic, it explores women’s movement, strength, fatigue and grace in both dance and sport with brilliant lucidity. I saw the work at the Teatro della Luna in Polverigi as part of the Inteatro festival. I thank my dear friend, dancer, choreographer, dance teacher and dance critic Stefania Zepponi for suggesting that we go and see it.

The dance opens with the lights designed by Rocio España Rodriguez on, the four dancers Arianna Brugiolo, Sara Cavalieri, Federica D’Aversa and Valentina Foschi moving at the perimeter of the stage and the image of the mosaic printed on fabric lying centre stage. Meike Clarelli and Davide Fasulo’s music starts: it is a soundscape, a sort of noise which recalls a crowd cheering and supporting its own team during a match.

The dance proceeds with slow-motion movements alternated with movements of different paces. One dancer moves in deep-second mimicking a sumo wrestler, another one mimicks a weight thrower with a cry in the process. Vocality has a special place in sport and is here reworked in an original manner thnaks to Meike Clarelli. At one point they all together say the following words following a crescendo: “la meta tocco lancio / nella mischia il cuore in gola passo schiaccio” [the goal I touch I throw / in the fray my heart in my thorat step I dunk]. At another point they sing a couple of lines from Madonna’s “Like a prayer”.

Le Palestriti, photo Luca Del Pia.

The dancers lift the mosaic fabric and show it to the audience to then play with it: they thorw it in the air and one of them wraps it around herself. They dance together and they dance each according to her own movement pace. Sometimes there is pure silence and one can hear the dancers’ heavy breathing after a particularly hard dance phrase. Movement from various sports continues to inspire the dancing with references to swimming, volleyball, rugby and even the haka from New Zealand.

There is a beautiful chorality on stage as both sport and dance for women, especially in relation to the mosaic, means exactly that. They are in this experience together, there is no real competition. The costumes, where white prevailed, were designed by Bertozzi herself, Katia Kuo and Cristina Suriani. The ending, perhaps not entirely necessary at least not as a final phrase, saw the dancers moving with a weight in the shape of a green ball attached to a rope, the noise of the ball against the stage being subtle and strong at the same time. When the dancers bow to the audience they do it with their arms over each other’s back, all intertwined with each other, all together as to signpost again the chorality of the piece. A nice and meaningful touch on the choreographer’s part.

This was a Nexus 2025 project, with the support of MIC, Comune di Bologna, Festival Danza Estate in collaboration with ALMASTUDIOS Bologna.