La nuova Abitudine

«We enter as spectators into the very soil of northern European regions; a soil facing east; a Russian soil. What we approach is the Znamenny chant, an ancient Orthodox liturgical chant, with a Greek imprint, which blends with the rural tradition of Russian music. We place ourselves in this context concretely, with the technique of an intuitive dance; with primitive bodily knowledge; with an assimilative approach, yet remaining spectators, with discretion and respect. A new habit, a new dress. We will show our regard to a type of music that has become part of people’s life, to the point of becoming a liturgy. Above all, we will make use of this music as the basis of a dance: walking and learning the movement from motions of smoke and the spiritual assaults of the night. When the onslaught against conditions that exist outside of everyday experience is condemned to be vain in the place where they exist, it is decisive to escape from their sphere of action, from where they are capable of absorbing any opposition. The spatial abandonment of such places is the ‘new habit’, which aspires to bestow upon its existence radically changed features. To change place, to go to other spaces, this is also the perspective of a metaphysical atmosphere that now orientates our dance, in which we also invite to participate certain singers from the Coro Bizantino di Musica Aeterna di San Pietroburgo. Dancers and choristers co-exist on stage- a coronation of a long preparatory period at the heart of this secular choral tradition of Eastern Europe’
Claudia Calstellucci.