This summer the Italian director, clown, acrobat and scene designer Daniele Finzi Pasca is traveling between St. Petersburg, Moscow, Lugano and Montreal. St. Petersburg is the first stop on the European tour of Cirque du Soleil’s show Corteo, the second show of the group to come to Russia. Last autumn the troupe brought Varekai to Moscow.
Daniele Finzi Pasca came up with the idea for Corteo five years ago. It has already toured to wide acclaim in North American and Japan, and is scheduled to make runs in the Russian cities St. Petersburg, Kazan and Moscow before heading to other European cities.
In Moscow, Daniele Finzi Pasca presented his show Donka this summer as a part of the Chekhov Theatrical Festival. It is showing in St. Petersburg, Lipetsk, Ryazan, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Samara and Tambov.
“I decided to discover Chekov, looking for particulars and details, both in his life and in the pages of his writings, and not only that,” Pasca says, explaining the origins of Donka. “I thought of giving shape to the silences contained in the notes of his diaries and of creating images from his annotations. I come from a theater deeply impregnated with the language of clowns, of jugglers, from the magical world of acrobats. That is how I will recall Chekhov…”
We spoke with Daniele Finzi Pasca about his works and life.
– What in your view is unique about Corteo?
– When we began to work on Corteo, I decided that we must completely overwhelm the audience. That is why the stage is situation in the middle of the chapiteau, like a podium. Our aim is to place the audience in some sort of recollection of a past in which it really has never been – in a pleasant dreamlike state. I want the viewer to go on a journey, a journey to some place unknown but at the same time comfortable and familiar, as if going to grandmother’s house. But this is a slow departure, out of the ordinary and accompanied by horns and drums. This isn’t a parade but rather something similar to an Italian restaurant with exquisite cuisine but at the same the tastes of childhood, as if it were your grandmother cooking.
– Do you love your audience?
– It is hard to say love when 2 million people have already seen Corteo. Love is like butter – you can’t eat too much. When I tell a story, I above all else tell it the circle of my closest and dearest, and with love. It’s as if I prepared a meal for my loved ones and the smell of this food also reaches the noses of the audiences.
– Who is included in this circle?
– My family, brothers, wife and five-seven friends. I always think of my grandmother when I work on my creations. And I continue my latent dispute with my father. I can quite accurately imagine where my father will smile and what will agitate him. And I have noted that audiences react in a similar manner.
– Do you think that our dialog with loved ones continues after their death?
– Last year I was working in London on the opera L'Amour de Loin (Love from Afar) by Kaija Saariaho in which there are two key players: the troubadour and Clemence. This love story begins from afar, and then troubadour dies, and love shifts from a horizontal connection to a vertical connection, and also from afar. It seems to me that our loved ones exist in three forms: physical reality, their image in our memory (which becomes intertwined with our own imagination), and then finally that someone above with whom we communication when we pray, meditate or practice shamanism.
– What is it like to stage a show that must be understood by people of very different cultures from across the world?
– When I worked on the opening ceremony for the Turin Winter Olympic Games, I came up against this problem: how to do something so that it would be understood by all. At the same time I wanted to do something totally new – tell my own story. But then I understood that not everything depends on the audience. If you want to make something for your friends, you make what know and love, regardless of their nationality or how many there are.
– Can you draw comparisons between your work on Donka and on Corteo.
– My meeting with Guy Lalibert
