Emio Greco:
A revolution of dance, with dance

By Andrew Princz
Reporting from Budapest for ontheglobe.com

After a multi-disciplinary blitz in the world of contemporary dance, Italian-born choreographer Emio Greco chooses to stick to what he considers to be the pureness of dance: the body.

Greco's work comes alive to the music of the solitary and reclusive composer Maurice Ravel who was known for his precision, intensity and a meticulous crafting of the musical score.

What Ravel once did for music, so Greco has done for dance in his masterful choreographic interpretation set to the musical score of Ravel’s Bolero.

"I react with what is on stage and stay faithful the pureness of the body and the dance." Greco said after performing his work Double Points: One and Two at a festival in the Netherlands late last month, "I do agree with looking to new boundaries, and talking about other art forms. But I also believe in staying pure and faithful to the art form."

Greco’s dance-based work stuck out at Springdance, a showcase known for presenting the best new choreographic talent in Europe and beyond. At the dance festival, the shows tended to reflect the deep fusion of dance with other mediums including theater, the visual arts and new technologies.

Within this atmosphere of fusion, the choreography of Greco looked like a kind of counter-revolution of the body.

"Dance has been in a sort of crisis that I would say that we are almost out of now," said Greco. "Those who are using new interactive mediums sometimes neglect pure dance, which sometimes even almost disappears. My work relies on the total involvement of the body, and the movement of dance."

The solo Double Points: One, the first part of the performance, is composed to music’s longest crescendo, Ravel’s Bolero. It is a riveting solo bringing together intensity, power, and a disciplined yet furious energy.

Since 1995 Greco, who is now based in Amsterdam, has worked with his collaborator Pieter C. Scholten in an exploration the intellectual and instinctive nature of the body in a series of project-oriented solos and duos.

Scholten, himself a theater director, has helped to bring together a work that with the use of sparse but dramatic lighting, brings out maximum intensity with a minimum of tools: light, the body, and sound.

The second part of the performance Double Points: Two, brings together the powerhouse duo consists of Emio Greco and Bertha Bermudez. The two tear apart the stage in a dazzling, awesome synchronized trajectory that gives the feeling of the bravado and danger of a bullfight.

"It is important to have the courage to look at dancers in terms of the value that they represent," said Greco. "There has been a tendency to think that you cannot revolutionize dance with dance, but I cannot agree with this. I really do think that you can re-shape dance with dance."

Double Point: One and Two, will be performed at the Trafo House of Contemporary Art on 11 and 12 May. If there’s anything that will hold Greco back tonight, it’s going to be a lack of a spacious dance floor. This dancer, however, will rip through both light and darkness, rest assured of that.

Montreal-based cultural navigator Andrew Princz is the editor of the travel portal ontheglobe.com. He is involved in journalism, country awareness, tourism promotion and cultural-oriented projects globally. He has traveled to over fifty countries around the globe; from Nigeria to Ecuador; Kazakhstan to India. He is constantly on the move, seeking out opportunities to interact with new cultures and communities.

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