With Save the Last Dance for Me, Italian choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni revives a dance about to disappear. This captivating piece revolves around Polka Chinata, a courtship dance originating from Bologna in the early 1900s. Traditionally performed exclusively by men, this physically demanding dance combines acrobatic movements and intricate embraces, with two dancers whirling and bending their knees almost to the ground. Sciarroni got to know about this dance in December 2018 when the dance was practiced in Italy only by five people in total.

For this piece Sciarroni works together with the dancers Gianmaria Borzillo and Giovanfrancesco Giannini to master the steps. In collaboration with Giancarlo Stagni, a dancing master who unearthed and studied videos of Polka Chinata from half a century ago, Sciarroni offers a twirling and physical performance breathing new life into this popular tradition in danger of extinction.

 

Alessandro Sciarroni is an Italian artist active in the field of Performing Arts, with several years of experience in visual arts and theater research. Relying on a conceptual base to take an extremely organic form, often at the limits of the physical resistance of the performers, his work is characterized by its rigor, its coherence and its intensity and has been shown in festivals and museums worldwide. In his creations he involves professionals from diverse disciplines and uses some techniques and experiences from dance, as well as circus, and sports. His work tries to uncover obsessions, fears and fragilities of the act of performing, through the repetition of a practice to the limits of the physical endurance of the interpreters, looking at a different dimension of time, and to an empathic relationship between the audience and the performers. In 2016, Moving in November presented Alessandro Sciarroni’s work UNTITLED_I will be there when you die. In 2019 he was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Dance by the Venice Biennial. Alessandro Sciarroni is associate artist of CENTQUATRE – PARIS and Triennale Milano Teatro 2022-2024.