[purgatorio] POPOPERA

Dance performance [purgatorio] POPOPERA by Emio Greco | Pieter C. Scholten, world premiere at Holland Festival 2008.
After their kaleidoscopic HELL (2006), Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten continue their journey through Dante’s La Divina Commedia with a [purgatorio] diptych. In [purgatorio] POPOPERA, Bang on a Can composer Michael Gordon enriches the typical EG/PC research on the relationship between dance and music using structural elements from rock music. Seven dancers intertwine with gleaming black electric guitars. A cross? A third arm? A lump of suffering? Dancers mutate into instruments. Raging guitars become fragile flesh and blood sound-boards. Chained by strings a crowd of dancers seeks purification in a redeeming rhapsody. [purgatorio] POPOPERA blends raw unpolished musicality with fine physical virtuosity and dissolves the borders of music and dance.