Foot-stomping stage show an exercise in endurance
The FOLK-S Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow dance performance at this year’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival is ground-rattling and a bit nerve-racking.
The show, on Feb. 2-4 at the Scotiabank Dance Centre, has six dancers take the stage to perform Schuhplattler (shoe beater), an ancient dance favoured in Austria and northern Italy. The dance requires the performers to stomp, clap and hit the soles of their shoes, their thighs and knees with their hands.
A physical feat at the best of times, this show is also an exercise in endurance as the performance continues until one person is left in the audience or one dancer is left on the stage. Created by choreographer and dancer Alessandro Sciarroni, the show, on average, lasts 90 minutes, but it has gone as long as three hours.
“It is quite challenging for the body because you are jumping all the time,” said Sciarroni over the phone from Italy recently. “I like to call it composition in real time. We have certain rules where you have to respect the dance. The dance is more important than anything else.”
While the dance is ancient, the music can be current. Onstage is a laptop loaded with 30 or so songs chosen by the six dancers. The hook, though, is once one piece has been used, it’s retired.
“We really want to keep it fresh all the time,” said Sciarroni, who created the show in 2012. “I always get a bit scared for the performance because you never know what is going to happen. I am happy I took the risk to make a performance like this, but at the same time I still feel the responsibility and I am still shaking every time.”
It’s that sort of high-wire-withouta-net feel that Sciarroni said helps to widen the audience for a contemporary-dance piece.
“If you are a dance audience maybe you will enjoy more the conceptual aspect of the piece. If you are a normal audience like my parents, for example, they are more thrilled with the challenge who is going to last more,” said Sciarroni.
Sciarroni’s interest in this Bavarian folk dance began with musician Rufus Wainwright’s CD, Release the Stars.
“On the back of the cover it is a picture of him wearing Tyrolean dress and it is a portrait from Sam Taylor-Wood (now Sam Taylor-Johnson). It is a beautiful portrait and I thought it had a kind of contemporary vibration in that dress and for the first time I started thinking about this typical dance that is practised in Austria and also in the north of Italy that I didn’t know anything about. I got more and more curious, so I went there to research,” said Sciarroni, who is the only dancer on stage to wear a traditional costume.
He got in touch with a dance company in the village of Trentino, Italy, and asked if they would coach his company through the dance.
“At first they said no, because if you are not born in the same village of these people you are not allowed to dance with them. They have very strict rules,” said Sciarroni.
He convinced them by saying they would learn on their own then come back to the villagers and show them what they had learned. The village dancers then agreed to offer direction.
“For me it was very important to be blessed by them, because it is not my tradition and I really wanted to approach it in a respectful way,” said Sciarroni. “I didn’t want it to become an appropriation of something that doesn’t belong to me. This dance is still alive and it is not something they practise for tourists.”
A history-laden dance that goes back to 3,000 B.C., the Schuhplattler had its practical uses.
“It was a mating dance used to engage women. So once you got married you were not allowed to do that anymore,” said Sciarroni.
A talkback session will take place after the performance.