3
May/16

COMPAGNIA FINZI PASCA: LA VERITÀ

3
May/16
You can expect the unexpected in (photo by Andrea Lopez)

You can expect the unexpected in Compagnia Finzi Pasca surreal tribute to Salvador Dalí (photo by Andrea Lopez)

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House
Peter Jay Sharp Building
230 Lafayette Ave.
May 4-7, $25-$80
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
finzipasca.com

In November 2012, Daniele Finzi Pasca presented the surreal Donka: A Letter to Chekhov, combining music, dance, storytelling, acrobatics, and circus arts in paying tribute to Russian writer Anton Chekhov. Finzi Pasca and his Swiss troupe, Compagnia Finzi Pasca (Icaro, Bianco su Bianco), are back at BAM this week, honoring Spanish surrealist and master showman Salvador Dalí. Running May 4-7 at the Howard Gilman Opera House, La Verità is a collaboration between Pasca and his fellow company founders, show cocreator Julie Hamelin Finzi; music and sound designer Maria Bonzanigo, who shares choreography credit with Finzi Pasca; set and prop designer Hugo Gargiulo; costume designer Giovanna Buzzi; and artistic consultant Antonio Vergamini. Pasca also designed the lighting with Alexis Bowles, and Roberto Vitalini did the videos. The backdrop for the mayhem is a re-creation of the mural Dalí made for the Metropolitan Opera’s 1944 ballet, Mad Tristan, for which Dalí also designed the sets and costumes. The anonymous owners of the mural approached Finzi Pasca to use it in a production, and what developed was La Verità, an extravaganza in which anything can happen. “The language of acrobatics, of physical theatre may easily conquer a territory where it is neither night or day, where light doesn’t touch reality but designs it, invents it or reinvents it,” Finzi Pasca explains on the company website. “The language of the acrobats titillates our unconscious, making us see inner landscapes that appear truer than reality. Dalí’s landscapes are set during night or day? The answer: neither; Dalí’s images belong to another dimension, the dimension of dreams.”