Theater: What if we danced one last slow dance tonight?

In Lyon, Emma Dante is best known for her theatrical adaptations of tales taken from the abundant repertoire of Giambattista Basile (1575-1632), who is in some ways a precursor to the Brothers Grimm. He is the author of The Tale of Tales, a collection of colorful and cruel fables, in which the powerful are often ridiculed. This is, in any case, what we saw with Re Chicchinella , programmed at the Célestins at the start of the season.

But if we will soon find at the TNP the strong images, the colorful costumes, the cruel humor and the actors with marked expressiveness which characterize the art of the director established in Sicily at the Vicaria, a former prison, it is with a completely different repertoire.

Il Tango delle Capinere (The Warblers' Tango in French), which gives its title to the show currently playing at the Villeurbanne institution, is a hit slow dance by Italian singer Gigliola Cinquetti. To this song, as well as much of Italian popular music from the 1960s and 1970s, an old man and an old woman, their bodies hunched, dance one last time. They cling to each other, tenderly and clumsily, spinning around like two fragile figurines in a music box. Memories of a life shared together resurface. Through dance and a few words, the couple reenacts the great scenes of their history. From the final dance to the original encounter, love unfolds in all its facets, sometimes lighthearted, sometimes terrible.

Il Tango delle Capinere is a revival, with some modifications, of an old piece by Emma Dante, Ballarini, created in 2011. It features its two performers, Manuela Lo Sicco and Sabino Civilleri, pillars of Emma Dante's troupe.

Il Tango delle Capinere – From May 15 to 24 at TNP - https://www.tnp-villeurbanne.com/