Positively spellbound

Fans of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” are in for a series of pleasant surprises next month when Italy’s Spellbound Dance Company presents their interpretation of the symphony on September 23 at the Thailand Cultural Centre as part of Bangkok’s 14th International Festival of Dance and Music.
The highly regarded dance company has combined multimedia effects with classical roots and incredible movements. The result is a production guaranteed to astound.
Founded in 1994 by choreographer Mauro Astolfi. Spellbound is now Italy’s leading dance company and has won over festival-sized crowds from Croatia to the United States to North Korea and at the prestigious Venice Biennale.
Dance critics have been especially enthusiastic about Spellbound’s version of the Four Seasons. Writing in L’Arena, Alessandra Galetto noted, “The outcome is a poetic and intense performance, immediate and deep.”
Tania Mastrangioli of Teatro.org wrote, “The ‘Four Seasons’ are pure essence. Under the apparent simplicity of the scene and costumes, there is hidden a wonderful complexity like the silent subsequence of the seasons, hiding in itself the continuous murmur of life.”
For the past 18 years, the company’s ambitions have been twofold: to present high-quality productions while supporting dance education and creativity. They are based in Rome where their headquarters is a buzzing combination of theatre, dance, music, art, professional workshops and courses.
The choreographic vision of founder and artistic director Astolfi is to keep developing works that embody pure, gestural expressiveness structured by classical techniques and training. Both poetry and precision are at the core of the company’s success.
After a stay in the US in the early ’90s, he founded Spellbound to express his personal idea of the choreographic language, which has become a reference point for many young dance creators. In demand across the world, Astolfi worked as a choreographer for the Theatre school in Amsterdam in 2005 and four years later created “Libera Risonanza” for the Balletto di Roma. Over the years, he has also worked as a teacher in the most important dance enclaves of Tokyo, Paris, London, New York, Stockholm and Amsterdam.
With Astolfi’s version of the “Four Seasons”, the Spellbound Dance Company has taken another enormous stride forward. All that poetry in motion will be on display at the Thailand Cultural Centre supported by the Embassy of Italy.
As the choreographer and artistic director explained, “Autumn means more than just leaves falling and spring is not only about flowers growing. All this has to be conceived as nature inside us, a primordial and magical ritual, an event that people imagine and then try to imitate. Then they try to appropriate the spirit of that event. “
This is precisely what the company has achieved. Make sure to book your tickets soon for an evening where nature’s magic dances with artistry’s vision.
Bangkok’s 14th International Festival of Dance and Music is sponsored by Bangkok Bank, B. Grimm, Dusit Thani Bangkok, The Nation Multimedia Group, Nivea, SCG, Singha, Thai Airways International, Tourism Authority of Thailand, and Toyota Motor Thailand.
  
ONE NIGHT ONLY
n The Spellbound Dance Company will present “Four Seasons” at 7.30pm on September 23 at the Thailand Cultural Centre.
n Get tickets at ThaiTicketMajor.
n For more information, |call (02) 262 3191 or visit www.BangkokFestivals.com.