Almost full hall on this rainy Saturday in Grugliasco. The show I attend is called Les jeux animés, which translated tastes like animated games, fun in motion. On stage, we see students from the Kataklò Academy and performers from the Kataklò Company offering reinterpretations of repertory choreography and new aerial choreographic experiments, resulting in an experimental work born from the fusion of sports, dance and theater. We are witnessing “a sporty creation that takes the physical and athletic matrix of its performers and combines it perfectly with a novel and exciting choreographic research that overcomes cultural patterns and barriers.”

This is the right opportunity for Giulia Staccioli (the internationally recognized Artistic Director and Choreographer for the past 20 years), to experience the first on-stage collaboration between Accademia Kataklò and the Kataklò Athletic Dance Theatre Company, both structures she directs.

Essentially inspired by and technically adapted at Teatro le Serre in Grugliasco, a tensile structure that takes us back to a magical circus imagery, this operation has a vaguely nostalgic flavor, recalling the great productions of Momix but not only, going so far as to offer moments of high circus acrobatics to situations of pure movement research.

Selected student dancers from Accademia Kataklò and dancer-performers from the young Kataklò Company, a total of 11 artists, stage original reinterpretations of repertory choreography and new aerial choreographic experiments that take the viewer into an unprecedented and vital dreamlike scenario that underlies each of Staccioli’s performances and the philosophy of the Kataklò Method, which for nearly 20 years has fused sports, dance and theater by moving away from the performative criterion of pure demonstration of dexterity. Also on stage are choreographies with aerial fabrics used in an unconventional way: a pas de de deux created by Eleina D. (aka Vito Cassano and Claudia Cavalli, two dancers from the Kataklò company) and a three-way version of “Falling Down” famous choreography created for the show “Up,” a production staged by the company in 2004.

The Kataklò adventure thus retains, even in the experience of Kataklò Circus, its avant-garde matrix that always overwhelms and still surprises spectators and operators around the world.

The average age of the dancers is very low, and what they can produce in the way of energy can be felt even in the back rows. It is a continuous running jumping throw, with a high pace. We cannot be distracted for a moment, we must quickly comment with our neighbors on our impressions because a new piece is already being performed. So did the applause, which was long and liberating only at the end, but each of the spectators present understood the beauty and effort of this poetic and acrobatic dance that manages to convey, by strange and winding personal paths, truly special feelings and moments.

At the beginning of the show, a voice advertised the school, which offers both professional and amateur courses.

Performers: Giulio Crocetta, Eleonora Guerrieri, Stefano Ruffato, Sara Palumbo, Chiara Panichi, Matteo Battista, Rebecca Rodella, Bruna Saltini, Davide Boi, Gabriele Puccia, Samuel Puggioni.

Source : https://www.teatrionline.com/2016/02/compagnia-kataklo-in-les-jeux-animes/