Deserto tattile

 photo      •      video

year: 2024

concept, choreography and costumes: Nicola Galli
dance: Nicola Galli, Giulio Petrucci
light design: Lucia Ferrero, Nicola Galli
dramaturg: Giulia Melandri
props: Giulio Mazzacurati
promotion: Margherita Dotta
production: TIR Danza, Nebula
co-production: Oriente Occidente
artistic residences: TROIS C-L, Oriente Occidente, PimOff Milano, Orbita | Teatro Quarticciolo
with the support of: Network Grand Luxe, Orbita | Spellbound Centro Nazionale di Produzione della Danza, PimOff Milano
length: 50 minutes

selected work NID Platform 2023 - open studios

Deserto tattile is a reflection on solitude and the desert understood as boundless space and existential condition; it's an investigation into the memory of the body, the haptic experience and the deep relationship between the gaze, gesture and tactility as elements for getting in touch with the world and to perceive the intangible.
On the threshold of a misty veil an abyss of body and world places are revealed and hidden through a play of contractions and expansions that dissolves the definitions of limit and distance. Gesture, light and sound are condensed to create sensory mirages in which to lose oneself and meet solitary travelling figures engaged in probing, listening, watching, pushing, shaking, letting themselves be caressed and touched.
Deserto tattile is a journey contended between distance and proximity, clarity and opacity, union and exclusion, capable of suspending the rhythm of everyday life to the point of annulling our perception of space-time.

"Nicola Galli's silhouette stands out against a veil, the only boundary of a performance that knows no hierarchies between artistic genres. The sounds of a distant and at the same time pervasive nature envelop the audience, who inevitably lose themselves in a continuous stimulus of colours and rhythm. The dancer's body unites with the music, on which it almost seems to depend until it becomes an integral part of it. On what appears to be a blazing sunset, another creature - the dancer Giulio Petrucci - wanders in the solitude of this stage that has brought the whole of existence in front of our gaze: from the initial dawn, to the abysses of what seem to be the deepest oceans. They meet each other, hide from each other, defend each other and finally get to know each other until they rediscover each other in their diversity, imitate each other in a pas de deux, in movements that accompany and harmonise in this desert immensity of modern existence."

Erica Baglio [ www.exibart.com - 09/2024 ]

"Nicola Galli, a dancer of rare plasticity, accompanies the audience in the misty Deserto tattile, an emotional and physical journey into a dark volumetric space out of time. The sense of touch here is a personal exploration of the ‘blind’ conquest of ‘other’ presences. Galli is a naked creature with shapes in definition, slowly moving with a constant metamorphosis and crossing, exploring, the space enveloped in a penetrating sound environment. Touch is explored with the skin, with the objects it encounters, but also with light: flashes and neon spun and thrown behind the backdrop reveal the presence of another creature in this desert."

Maria Luisa Buzzi [ Danza&Danza Magazine - 11/2024 ]