Humor Bizzarro 2019 – Ilaria Sainato: 17th-18th century Dance and Rhetorical Gesture

Course programs and teacher’s CV

La Couronne de fleurs – 17th-18th century Dancing

The course takes its inspiration from the pastorale in three scenes by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. This work, composed around 1685 on a text by Molière on the occasion of the Truce of Regensburg, celebrates the greatness of Louis XIV by staging the gods Flore and Pan who, together with a group of shepherds, extol the virtues of the Monarch.
The course is aimed towards dancers, musicians and whoever wishes to approach or to further the knowledge of baroque dance technique. The theoretical and practical classes feature warm-up, study of basic choreutic technique and of choreographies, mainly reconstructed from the Beauchamp–Feuillet notation; part of the classes will be devoted to questions pertaining sources, dance notation and treatises, choreographic repertory, giving a particular attention to the connection and integration between music and dance, with reference to problems of performance of dance music. The choregraphic numbers will be chosen or composed by the teacher according to the level and the needs of the participants.

Rhetorical Gesture Seminar

The seminar is aimed towards singers, dancers, actors, musicians and whoever is interested in the repertory of musical theatre of the 17th and 18th centuries. It offers to the students a further tool for performing such repertory through an in depth examination of the typical features of baroque theatre, of rhetorical gesture and of themes such as the stage proxemics, the roles and typical characters, the theory of affections.

Course location: Rome (Italy). Info about registration and costs, with online contact form, is available at this link.

Ilaria Sainato

graduated in Musicology at the Università degli studi di Pavia-Cremona, with a dissertation in Phylology about Italian dance of the Quattrocento. She has studied Renaissance and Baroque dance with Veronique Daniels, Barbara Sparti, Deda Cristina Colonna, Ana Yepes. She teaches Renaissance dancing at Scuola di Musica Antica di Venezia and gives courses and theoretical-practical seminars at schools, institutions and associations in Italy and abroad. She organizes shows about dance of the 15th to 17th Century in collaboration with several ensembles and companies; in particular with La Girometta she deals with the reconstruction of Italian dance repertory of the Quattrocento and Cinquecento from the original treatise sources taking in to account their musical concordances. She has extended her research to problems in reconstructing 17th and 18th Century theatrical performance with music, in particular regarding staging and gesture, collaborating to several stage productions such as Don Giovanni by W. A. Mozart, Il Ballo delle Ingrate by C. Monteverdi, La Fida Ninfa by A. Vivaldi, Atalanta Fugiens by M. Maier, Flavio Cuniberto by G. D. Partenio; she has also directed this latter. She has been assistant direcctor for: Mulier Fortis by J. B. Staut, The Fairy Queen by E. Purcell and Così fan tutte by W. A. Mozart (directed by Deda Cristina Colonna), Madama Butterfly and Turandot by G. Puccini (directed by Hiroki Ihara), Rigoletto by G. Verdi (directed by Ivan Stefanutti), Sonnambula by V.Bellini (directed by Stefano Vizioli). She collaborates with As.Li.Co. – Teatro Sociale di Como as Stage Manager.