Shows /

Icarus and Daedalus

or_I am not an angel
Marta Bevilacqua / Compagnia Arearea
2020

With a first movement — vertical, sudden, swift — Icarus and Daedalus left behind what was known and familiar, embarking on a journey driven by curiosity and the desire to discover and to give themselves new rules, different from those they once knew. They come from a dimension where time seems frozen, where evolution is unknown.

On stage, they live as childlike explorers, endlessly drawn to all they do not yet know.
The myth of Icarus and Daedalus is a courageous undertaking — an escape toward freedom, a deep dive into the relationship between father and son, a classic example of the difference between two human virtues: recklessness and courage. To calculate risks, to respect limits, to find the right measure — eumetria — is what preserves life.

I am interested in this difference, in this time of reflection. Once again, I will explore it through dance and three powerful characters: Icarus, Daedalus, and Minos, King of Crete.
The performance translates the great actions of myth into motor writing: finding one’s way through the labyrinth, escaping, building, inventing, flying, falling. The work unfolds around a metaphor: escaping the labyrinth we ourselves have built.

Halfway between a construction site and the sky, between the concrete and the airborne, my Icarus is not an angel, but a boy who loves play in the broadest sense — as a practice tied to childhood, but also as a path that opens an ironic gaze upon reality. My youthful hero will undergo a transformation on stage, leading him to a symbolic death and granting him access to a new dimension.
Flight is the starting point — and the means through which Icarus realizes his will to transgress.

The Project

The MITICA project sees Marta Bevilacqua, dancer and choreographer of Arearea Company, engaged in creating dance works for younger generations.
MITICA addresses the great themes of classical antiquity — themes dear to the artist, who, through her training and passion, has presented them choreographically in urban spaces and theatres across Italy and Europe, conveying the fascination of ancient narratives steeped in sacredness, in the awareness that they are a powerful means of communication for reflecting on contemporary reality.

Myth is pedagogical at any age: it is at once rigorous and transgressive, it does not judge, it contemplates ruin, it flaunts no moralism, it trusts in beauty.