Laura Aimo

The concept of expression is closely related to the key-problem of mimesis and its dialectic between production and re-production. The Jeu de Peindre by Arno Stern offers a privileged vantage point in this regard by releasing painting from any communicative purpose and discovering in it a channel for the emergence of organic memory...

Poche le filosofe ricordate dalla storia. Ancor meno quelle che nei loro studi si siano interessate di teatro. Come se ciò dischiudesse un destino troppo forte./Parola e gesto./Ragione e passione./Maschile e femminile./Unità e molteplicità./Ricerca e dono...

Contemporary dance and performance are art forms whose boundaries are blurred, elusive and often overlapping...

Nothing seems more remote from politics than dance. Yet when a body is capable of occupying a cultural space, such an action is already dense with political implications, with an ideological or anti-ideological matrix...

RIASSUNTO La tragedia incompiuta Venise sauvée è un enigma e, insieme, un cristallo geometricamente perfetto. Oggetto di scarso interesse fino a oggi all’interno degli studi weiliani, la pièce concentra in versi e immagini il pensiero assoluto dell’autrice permettendo di approfondirne luci e ombre. Al tempo stesso quest’opera consente di avvicinare riscritture novecentesche poco conosciute del teatro tragico e di metterne alla prova forme e contenuti attraverso occhi femminili, appassionati di perfezione: occhi ‘imperdonabili’. Obiettivo precipuo di questo saggio è analizzare la genesi, la struttura drammaturgica e i principali nodi teorici che scaturiscono dal testo drammatico al fine di investigare il conflitto e, insieme, l’insospettabile rimozione, che li caratterizza. Più nello specifico, attraverso l’intersezione della pièce con altre opere della stessa autrice o prese da lei a modello, si vuole mostrare come la bellezza – concetto chiave del pensiero weiliano – finisca per tradire la trama stessa della realtà da cui trae origine – e di cui si offre quale accesso privilegiato – se tende ad annullarne la contraddizione. Il tragico non è negoziabile o redimibile e il bello scaturisce soltanto da ogni aporia consumata fino in fondo: è confine sottile e in continua oscillazione tra opposti inconciliabili che chiede di essere abitato. SUMMARY The unfinished tragedy Venise sauvée is an enigma and, at the same time, a geometrically perfect crystal. Subject of little interest, to this date, within the weilian studies, the play gathers in verses and pictures the absoluteness of thought of the author, allowing to deepen its shadows and highlights. At the same time, this play allows as well to bring little-known twentieth-century rewritings of tragedy in light, and testing its forms and contents through the eyes of women, lovers of perfection: eyes which are ‘unforgivable’. Primary objective of this paper is thus to analyze the genesis, the dramatic structure and the main theoretical points arising from the dramatic text in order to investigate the conflict and, together, the unexpected displacement which characterizes them. More specifically, through the intersection of the play with other works by the same author or with works taken by the author as model works, we want to show how beauty, which stands as a key concept of the weilian thought, ends up betraying the very fabric of the reality from which it originates (and to which it offers itself as a privileged way of access) when it tends to cancel contradictions. The tragic is not negotiable or redeemable, and beauty springs only from all aporia which are worn down to the bottom: thin line it is, and in constant oscillation between irreconcilable opposites which just ask to be lived.

Toute la nouvelle version tragique du siècle passé se dresse sur un double et indissociable contexte: celui des images et du texte qui ont été accumulés au fil du temps pour former le tissu de notre tradition et ce qui soutient et nourrit cette surface, c’est à dire la puissance créative inhérente à la poursuite du processus de construction sémantique des mondes figés dans les formes de la pensée mythique. C’est cette double et unique perspective qui anime cette lecture de Night Journey, le chef d’oeuvre de 1947 de la fondatrice de la danse moderne, Martha Graham. Grâce à une analyse de la chorégraphie on va tenter de montrer comment ce travail ne peut être réduit à une simple transposition choréiques de la tragédie d’OEdipe, mais il doit être interprété en termes de forme et expérience originales du contenu tragique du mythe lui-même. Plus précisément, nous tenterons de faire émerger comme Night Journey puisse représenter un exemple paradigmatique d’affichage et d’actualisation d’une structure particulière: un rythme en spirales de forces opposées. SUMMARY Any tragic rewriting of the past century stands on a dual and inseparable background: that of images and texts that have been accumulated over time to weave our tradition and what sustains and nourishes this surface, i.e. the creative power inherent in the continued process of building semantic worlds congealed in the forms of mythic thought. It is from this dual and unique perspective that drives this reading of Night Journey, the 1947 masterpiece of the founder of modern dance, Martha Graham. Through an analysis of the choreography we will try to show how this work cannot be reduced to a simple choreic transposition of the tragedy of Oedipus, but it must be interpreted in terms of an original form and experience of the tragic content in the myth itself. More specifically, we will attempt to underline how the Night Journey may represent a paradigmatic example of exhibition and actualization of a particular structure: a spiral rhythm of opposing forces.