FILAR

ANTONELLA D'ASCENZI

dance, puppet, visual poetry

Fani Benages
fani@fanibenages.com
+ 34 654 925 551

Filar is a piece of contemporary dance and visual poetry that speaks about the power of the relationship between bodies and objects, a relationship that develops from the distance of threads. How to feel the other body, that of a puppet, in this distance?

The story of Filar is that of a world that is built every day and, suddenly, falls apart. So when there is a crisis, how can we build community again and feel like we live in a web of threads and relationships?

The threads create an invisible connection between everything that happens, the threads unite us with our families, friends, or the people with whom we share paths. The threads maintain the connection in the distance.

CREDITS

PREMIERE: January 16, 2022 at LASALA Miguel Hernández de Sabadell (Barcelona)

Choreography and performance Antonella D’Ascenzi
Dance advice Toni Mira
Puppet and object manipulation advice Damiano Privitera
Light Design Elena Piscitilli
Costume design Cristina Robledillo
Video animation and projection design Guillem Muñoz
Sound edition Roger Blasco
Music Adrián Berenguer
Realization of objects and puppets Antonella D’Ascenzi
Photos Carles Decors, Hélio Mendes
Recording of the piece Julian Waisbord

[...] Filar, as a multidisciplinary work [...] that never loses its focus on the relationship between dancer and puppet, is an example of exceptional achievement in the world of performance for children and adults. [...] The synchronisation of movement, dance and lighting effects, which is an extremely challenging task in this work, was accomplished with impressive practice. The performer demonstrated that she is equally skilled in solo dance movements and in the movement of the puppet (strings wrapped around the fingers), which culminated in a joint duet between performer and puppet". [...] Children of all ages (from babies to school children) followed the performance with great attention and on many occasions there was spontaneous applause, both individually and collectively; adults also watched the performance to see if there were any imaginary balloons to pull back on the stage.

[...] At the service of this demanding work, which relies on the intelligence and imagination of those who receive it, a high-precision digital scenography (...) Full of poetry, abundant visual forms, a true kaleidoscope, Filar is a sophisticated show, with an abstract workmanship until the intervention of a puppet that sweetly wakes up... [...]

For some time now, the dancer Antonella D'Ascenzi has been working on her need to combine dance with the manipulation of puppets, especially string puppets, a technique she learned with the master Jordi Bertran. That is to say, to seek a splitting of the dancer into characters that are always moved by strings. Over the years, she has performed several works along these lines, and in this latest adventure, entitled Filar, she seems to have found a register in which she feels very comfortable and which has given her a magnificent result. The result is a very careful work, which Antonella creates with exquisite sensitivity, pulling on threads that are ultimately the threads of life, through which we communicate with others but also with cosmic distances, threads that, despite the cliché, we could also call quantum. The audience was enthralled by the rich universe of threads that Antonella D'Ascenzi unfolded on stage.

The choreographer Antonella D'Ascenzi had a vision during the reflection of the first months of the pandemic. While she was on her roof, “the people, the birds, the antennas of the houses, were building threads.” When she stuck her head out of the balcony and looked at the street, “people created a choreography to maintain interpersonal distance.” [...] Filar is the materialization of this idea, a mix of contemporary dance and visual poetry. An opportunity where the interpreter uses the threads that bind her to a puppet to find what unites things, people and emotions. "If union exists, it is because distance precedes it, and this is the double-cutting weapon of love," she adds... [...] In short, a family play that its author wants to connect with the experiences that parents and children shared during confinement. “Filar's story is simple, I'm just trying to build a swing for my daughter, even so, it gets destroyed.”[...]

[...] Filar is a show that literally flies towards a universe of videographic signs and bodies that are sought, to highlight lasting and inseparable links through real and imaginary threads dominated by a puppet". [...]

[...] white balloons, a puppet with very human features and many geometric paths drawn in the background, or even simply sketched in the air, for the story of imaginary flights in a perennial balance between reality and fantasy. The strings of the puppet but also the invisible ones of light and space define a pattern of relations between the *performer's body and the bare space, a scenographic context with which D' Ascenzi manages to interact.

Winning project of the #SOSCultura scholarship from the Carulla Foundation
From the Agita Scholarship of the Figueres City Council
from the OSIC Research and Innovation Grant – Generalitat de Catalunya
of the TTP creation grant – Theater Association for all audiences
Project selected for the «Progetto CANTIERE» of the Incanti di Torino Festival (Italy)