Pulcinella Suite - Igor Strawinksy

„In my practise as artist I am not looking for the representation or the illustration; instead I focus on physical ideas and ask my dancers to physicalize emotions rather then acting them, moving away from the Pulcinella ballet story in it’s original libretto.

The Pulcinella suite from Strawinksy, recomposed the original baroque music of Pergolesi and other composers from that time, is very eclectic in it’s musical colors, and fits perfectly for creating different scenes. I use hard cuts or fast change overs, extreme tempi and dynamic impulses to evoke emotions instead of the development of a story line or plot. 
Each scene becomes a miniature world in which dancers interact with one and another in an extreme physical way; manipulating each other, confronting each other, isolating themselves from each other or counterpointing each others actions. The embodiement of ideas and the ability to speak through movement is supported by using breath and through sounds like whispering which intensifies the dancing. The primary emotions used in commedia dell’arte are a base for each scene, and find their way in group parts, solo’s, duets and trio’s in a surrealistic way or poetic way.”

Nanine Linning

Pulcinella suite, which story is rooted in a manuscript found in Naples around 1700, is one of the characters of the Commedia dell’arte. 

Characters in this Napoletan theater form would use Gromalot as language and as Commedia companies toured outside of Italy, to France and Spain, Gromalot evolved, a nonsensical babble speak that carried the truthful emotional intention of a character. This language meant that audiences were able to understand the action on the stage and enabled commedia dell'arte to become an international type of theatre.

Commedia dell’arte as artform is based on the idea of physicalising the primary emotions: joy, grief, fear, anger, surprise, love, laughter and how to use these in a performance rather than acting.

Today, Commedia dell’arte still has a huge influence on modern theater and other dramatic formats such as film; it underlines the surrealististic dreams and interactions between performers rather then representation of reality.