Lens: Voigtlander color-skopar 35mm f2.5
Camera: NEX-7, ISO1600, f2.5, 1/25, raw
The Romaeuropa Festival is, by far, the best art festival we have in Rome. Dance theatre, conceptual theatre, music, video-art, digital-art, performing-arts and photography find their place in the 2012 program of the festival, which presents nine Italian, one European, and five World premiers.
Today we had the luck to find two central seats for the piece “Birds with Skymirrors”, a dance theatre work of the Samoan choreographer Lemi Ponifasio, produced by MAU. It was incredible, and not only because it’s more than a year that Claudia and I can’t find the time to assist to a dance theatre show.
Ponifasio is a real and enlightened artist, one of those (few) who know that art isn’t supposed to say how things are, but to change the perspective on reality by putting the audience on a different (and vantage) point of view. The artist isn’t responsible for how this change in perspective will work on any member of the audience either. As Ponifasio beautifully said after the show, an artist has to question what reality is and, to do so, he has to constantly face the void.
In “Birds with Skymirrors”, Ponifasio wanted to give his contribution to the fight against the global warming, which is really a big deal for Samoa, where the reef is dying, the fishing is struggling, and sea level rise is threatening islanders. But, as an artist, he’s not interested in shouting “Stop burning oil!” to the audience face. He knows we all get that advise many times everyday, and that is not to hear it in a theatre which is going to change our minds. What he does is to give the audience a different point of view, showing how his dancers can transform into mythological and dreamy birds, how their bodies can gently and harmoniously float on the stage just to suddenly struggle and suffer due to oil on their wings. What Ponifasio does is to make the audience all to dream the same dream, the one in which humans are birds, and as such beautiful and threatened. Have everyone in the audience feel the connection with the universe, he said, and then they’ll find their ways to protect it.
Brilliant. Oh, and yes, the show is fantastic, and since you love photography you would love the superb use of the light too.