Hell - Emio Greco | PC

In the past few years Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten have directed their attention to the relationship between their specific dance language and theatre, opera and contemporary music. With all the knowledge acquired in these projects, they focus in HELL (2006), for the first time since Rimasto Orfano, their attention purely on the language of the body. Thus, they journey back to the starting point of their collaboration, although not expecting to find things the same as when they departed. In HELL, Greco and Scholten delve deeper into the layers of dance, they explore the components of different directions in dance and look at how they are read and decoded. It is a search for ways to extend the boundaries of our physical identity, ways to unleash the unpredictable body. For HELL, Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten find their inspiration in the visual arts, the performing arts and literature, specifically Dante’s INFERNO. In the creative process they were confronted with strong existing connotations and associations linked to the theme. They break open the fixed notions of „heaven“ and „hell,“ „good“ and „bad.“ Though they find their inspiration in existing (art-)historical approaches to these themes, they then deconstruct them in order to be able to create new meaning. In their fascination with discovering the language of the body under the skin, they continually question the known. In the creative process existing connotations of and associations with the notion of hell are broken down and deconstructed in order to be able to rebuild a new meaning. Greco and Scholten find their inspiration in both the visual arts, the performing arts and literature, more specifically in Dante’s Inferno and the allegro con brio of Beethoven’s Fifth. By actually tilting the familiar historical point of perspective they add new meaning to these pieces and open up new entrances into existential questions.