NATURAL MOVEMENT DANCE
Hello, I'm Giovanni Zappulla, choreographer and dancer, creator, artistic and pedagogical director of the Espace Choreographic Center in Palermo, born from the collaboration between me and Annachiara Trigili, dancer and teacher; since June 2005 it is the headquarters of our company and training center for contemporary dance based on the Danza Movimento Naturale method, the result of the research I conducted starting from a personal study on the work of Isadora Duncan, which I consider a precious precursor of an important part of my work.
I am writing this text to describe in detail my method and my ideas. Espace has so far responded to a need, it is no coincidence that it was born in Palermo, in this quite ancient country, to give something completely new and advantageous for everyone.
I think the time is right for sharing something very important for the future of dance. The Sicilian isolation, which until now has been a positive factor, now becomes a limit.
My method is born from the substantial union of contemporary dance and music, where the human body is conceived as an orchestral instrument.
The Method is designed by integrating in its path Taijiquan Chen and Qigong (Zhineng Qigong) systems based on internal movement, consistent with human nature in the biomechanical, energetic and psychic aspects.
In my opinion, the Platonic and Aristotelian vision of existence has created today a culture of splitting the body and its mental aspect, therefore a dance that moves further and further away from pleasure, the dancer is often confronted with a profession that brings the body to the wear, which weakens it, often forcing the artist to retire early. In this regard, my goal is to make the dancer strong through the dance itself. Dance can be natural, incredibly rich, our bodies can go far beyond questions of techniques and styles, movement has its own truth.
What contemporary dance has started to do again for a little over a century is to give the body the opportunity to make its natural history, to express its essential movement according to its real balance. In the simplest gesture, extremely complex processes intervene; a considerable number of successive dynamic transmissions take place according to the laws of physics. Our bodies follow the same laws, but do we really listen to them? We let them do ...? Do we let our body express its own rhythm? How to follow its natural mechanisms to really move, regardless of the effect to be produced, the result to be achieved? How to move slowly or quickly, without imposing an artificial functioning, without dissociating, without fragmenting our being? If technological progress and the advancement of science have helped to restrict the space-time in which an innumerable amount of information reaches us, what about individual space-time? Shouldn't the conquest of space first be that of the personal microcosm, starting with the discovery of one's own body?
The individual is a single substance seen from two identical modalities, mind and body. Losing the obsession with thinking about the body and dominating it, discovering what the body thinks, listening to the sensory memory of its action and therefore its language, will allow the dancer to express himself harmoniously and develop his skills. Harmony is the consciousness of an organic functioning, which obeys its dynamic equilibrium, a reality that today very few people express. This will be one of the important themes on which the potential of the natural dance method will be addressed, which we can call Re-Unire, just a few examples: Re-unite music and dance, performing arts with fine arts, re-unite Art and Science, Spirit and Body, Spectator and Actor, Art places and Urban spaces, East and West ...
The dancer can only listen to his own music. A double work listening to the body and the music allows the dancer to gradually tune as finely as a musical instrument by resolving all sorts of tensions and distortions: the nature of the body is essentially harmonic.
This working method is based on a gradual program of exercises concerning: the subtle perception of the body, the solicitation of the anti-gravity muscles, analysis of the movement generating principle and the alternation of weight unloading, the study of the connections between all parts of the body in dynamic concatenation without interruptions. A gradual discovery, step by step, according to an increasing complexity, the phrasing of the movement can become as rich as music, include as many gestures as the musical combinations of notes. Thus each dancer develops a sensitivity and a precise perception of himself and others, connecting to a common partition with increased homogeneity and fluidity. Dance is no longer linked to a relationship of "sympathy" with music, no longer making it just the narration, both can perfectly interpenetrate, making possible dialogue and true exchange with the musicians, but also finally thinking about a complete writing of the dance in collaboration with the systems at our disposal today (Laban or Benesh) and which will be a reason for collaboration with the various universities. The new aesthetics of this dance makes evident the harmonically perfect geometries of the masses and volumes of the natural alignments of the body, both in static position and in a dynamic situation, obtaining segmental and general control, rhythmic precision in execution, tranquility in fast movement and pulsating fullness in slow motion. Resolving any "compensatory adjustment" of all the elements that reveal the presence of a "knot" that prevents the movement to be fully effective, intense, expressive, "true." All this opens up new ones opportunity to structure a research program in collaboration with psychologists and analysts on the implications that this method has in restoring balance through what I call Physical-analysis. One hundred years after Carl Gustav Jung's work on analytical psychology, my tracks of work on the body could lead to extraordinary discoveries on the links between synapses and connections.
From this model of respect for the body, considerable savings are made (reduced fatigue, pushing one's limits further) and formidable energy development, to this topic it is important to emphasize that the practice of Qigong and Taijiquan are part of the training program of the dancer and I would also like to make this practice available to musicians who can benefit from all this to improve the relationship with their bodies and thus their musical performances.
Dancing is rediscovering and involving all our natural way of being in the world. Beyond dance, it is a question of living in harmony, of rediscovering that progress can also be harmonious. Thus, beyond the production of a show, of an aesthetic pleasure, dance is an art of living, an essential existence that I think can flourish in the extremely favorable conditions that a collaboration could offer. Only then, and without terms of comparison, can it be a show of quality, that is, a new and original, beautiful creation of natural beauty. The action of the show will generate a greater impact on the spectator so the social awareness actions will be strengthened by recognizing in the dancer his own personal potential (human potential) of the dancer and not of the superman, capable of astonishing but unattainable in his virtuosity.
Adults will be able to look through the eyes of children and children will let themselves be reached by art. The innovative effect of this dance is to be truly democratic, and will not make the dance itself suffer the losses of an exclusive selection, created by an elite meat grinder victim of fashions and canons.
Lightness, grace are a step towards a new world, a regenerated world, a space without fixity, essentially mobile, in the heart of our now too urban civilization.
