Differences on Stage
Edited by Alessandra De Martino, Paolo Puppa and Paola Toninato.
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Part II Dramatic Differencies
Chapter Six
Stultifera Navis: Theatre and “Madness” in the Last Forty Years in Italy Roberto Cuppone
pag. 106
Other artists, this time involved in the butoh dance, are Ezio Tangini, Flavia Ghisalberti and Yann Van Steenbrugghe, who, in 2003, founded the company In Between, from the title of their first project, Qualcosa fra – Something in between, about “madness socialization” and its realms: “reclusion places for mentally ill people have become part of the collective memory…, evocative symbols. Places which still make local passers-by shiver. Testimonies of times when madness was like a sin.”31 The intertwining of the protagonists’ backgrounds in visual arts, modern dance and body therapy finds in butoh favourable terrain for reflection on contemporaneity, in Italian ex-madhouses (Rome, Siena), but also at specific international festivals in St Petersburg, Paris, London, Indianapolis and Edinburgh. In fact, they are “postbasaglians” who “construe madness as the soul escaping from the body, neither repulsive nor sinful. A getaway to be photographed and understood.”32
31 See Ilaria Sacchettoni “Danza della memoria all’ex-manicomio” Corriere della Sera 1 Giugno 2004
32 Ibid.
pages 274 euro 54,64
This book first published 2013
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK