MAPPUGGHJE

My eyes that loved you so much (Luigi Tenco)

The project Mappugghje is a work of dance and voice which has the purpose to investigate, through the mixing of different languages, the theme of Love and its most “extreme” expressions and inflections. The main character of this tale is Homer's Penelope who, with the same impersonality and lack of chronological order of Molly Bloom, expresses the point of view of a neglected woman, seated in constant waiting, packing and unpacking her suitcase, delaying her decisions and loving a man who is reduced to a mere idea sweetened by time. In the dialect spoken in the Salento region, the word mappugghje indicates the bits and pieces, the odds and ends, all the things that we put in wallets, drawers, tin boxes and that we keep regardless their little material value. To these objects we entrust pieces of our hearts, of our journeys and memories, asking them to preserve them, while we wait to feel ready to thrust them all in the attic. Waiting is what the character of this duo for body and voice does, a peculiar Penelope who lives in the stillness of a little house. Quiet and patient, she moves among the mappugghje of her heart, trying to retrieve a thread of it which is inevitably bound to melt with the sugar of her umpteenth coffee. Since immemorial time, Penelope devoutly waits. And in the meantime she learns to experiment herself (because if you wait you'll find, but if you don't, you'll never discover anything). Her staying nourishes the inner time of knowledge, nourishes her soul and her ability to listen. The choreography is enclosed into a “restrained” space and is made of crooked movements, of repeated gestures simulating small domestic urgencies, then suddenly evolving towards different worlds, far from that diminutive space. Short travels among tiny movements. The silence, the time of non-doing, the time of memories, the waiting, eyes looking around. Sitting impatiently and imagining the great return. Waking up. A coffee. Dressing herself. Remembering to take the comb, the black rubber bands, the small hairpins and hairgrips left on the table, then setting down in front of the mirror... Waiting... Braiding her hair, wearing a string of pearls, turning it twice around her neck, putting on a pair of shoes worn off by stillness. Waiting. Doing herself up. Always. For Love. Looking out at the sea. Feeling something slipping away. Loving. Waiting while waiting. And in the meantime putting some sugar in a cup of coffee. (…) Penelope's act of staying is an empty waiting and, as such, it is full of an inconceivable potential. It is the discovery of the smallest facets, the attention given to the sound of silence preceding an awaited return and, in this silence, she listens to the gentle undertow of the sea, the whisper of the wind, her lungs filling with air, the blood rushing through her veins, the wood alive and creaky and all the sounds that can be heard only by those who have time to wait. (S. Mazzotta)