Imagine the black of a theatrical box ... and now imagine an opening, designed by a beam of light, which immediately captures the viewer's attention, bringing him with him into an experience that has, from start to finish, all the emotional flavor of the title and accompanying music: La Vita, Shirley Bassey.

The end-of-year essay of the dance school of the Vicenza choreographer Betty Tezza announced itself, almost like a mood that emerges from the expressive nothingness of a black who has something archaic in him, an act in which gestures are made call and symbol of a necessary collective awakening, in the warmth and ferment of a late May evening.

During the show, amid the applause of the audience that had all the flavor of gratitude, my thoughts did somersaults with the fear of losing them: I also tried to understand the choreographer's choice to divide the essay into two moments. A precise choice, he then explained to me, due to the desire to enhance the smallest (and very small!) Girls at 6 pm and later, with the show at 9 pm, also the older girls, together with an amateur group of adults. Different moments and artistic choices, which have met the taste of a different audience.

Those who expected to simply see what the students of the dance school have learned to "do" found themselves in front of a group of dancers of different ages who, through the art of dance, showed "what they are" and “Where” they are, in this fragment of time and space that we all inhabit.

The cinematic opening of the second part of the essay, the subject of the review, is beautiful: a roundup of shots and poses through which the protagonists of the performance enter a narrative in which the choreographic language is almost a symbiosis between dance and theater, in a close relationship with the contemporary poetics of Pina Baush, always looking for new solutions.

“Whoever has a why to live, bears almost every how”, wrote Nietzsche.

And if this "why", if the meaning of a life that surprises us and sometimes overwhelms us is declined in the plural, it is "l'Amour toujours" that touches the deep chords of the human soul ... it is "Life", first choreography on stage. From a group of dancers who dance to the color of emotions, a couple of young people in love come off, two souls who look for and caress each other with their eyes, transported here and there by an unobtrusive desire.

The feeling is that of being captured by a vital flow which then becomes almost a jolt in "Man O To". The pulsating body of a young dancer dominates the scene making it almost material: a solo of stereotyped poses and movements expresses a regenerating, almost primordial energy, which we also find in other moments of the essay, when the bodies of the dancers meet in a dialogue that it becomes almost the subtext of the whole show, appearing at times as an interlude.

What is striking is the great research and in-depth work done by the choreographer with her students: a path of awareness in which the body, emotions, movement, allow those who dance to get in touch with the deepest roots of expressiveness. , with its own authenticity which is also the nakedness of the soul. And freedom.

These research paths usually go a long way, also because they mean commitment, perseverance, slowness, exercise, attention to detail, love for one's body.

It is no small thing, in a society that continually proposes the culture of the ephemeral and the idea of a body to be exhibited, a tool for embellishment, a thing.

Through dance each person has the opportunity to get in touch with their own truths, and it is from those that one should start to find a personal security that then becomes autonomy, critical sense, self-control, awareness.

A deep feeling that is also a "group feeling" that promotes dialogue, participation, building bridges with others as in the choreography "Dance For Me Wallis" which represents the absence of division, the need for the other, mutual support.

The expressiveness of the young dancers and the elegance of the students of the adult amateur course merged into an intense finale of great emotional impact.

Also on stage was the choreographer from Vicenza who, having entered almost by chance, handed her work to the viewer, through the careful and refined introduction of a daily gesture aimed at overcoming the separation between reality and its representation, a "rupture of the fourth wall ”with a fully twentieth-century flavor.

From the black box of a small independent theater, Betty Tezza's dance announced itself as a state of empowering presence.

"Ah ... life - there is nothing more beautiful than life - and perhaps many people don't know - don't know - don't know ... Ah ... life - what is more beautiful in the world - and there is none we almost never, almost never, almost never ... "