From her early years in dance research with Carolyn Carlson to Epiphania. Mi rendo manifesta, Antonella Bertoni has spent more than four decades exploring the body as a space of consciousness, resistance, and transformation through dance theatre. In this conversation, she retraces the origins of the Abbondanza/Bertoni company and reflects on the current state of the contemporary scene.
The artistic partnership between Antonella Bertoni and Michele Abbondanza began in the early 1990s, when she danced in Carolyn Carlson’s Commedia at Théâtre de la Ville and he was Carlson’s assistant. Their meeting became both a personal and artistic turning point. In 1995 they founded the Abbondanza/Bertoni company, intertwining reinterpretations of myths and literary masterpieces with a deep commitment to teaching. Their lineage traces back to the birth of Italian dance theatre in the 1980s, when Carlson was invited by Italo Gomez to train young dancers at La Fenice, leading to the creation of Sosta Palmizi and the seminal Il Cortile (1985). Bertoni herself abandoned a promising rhythmic gymnastics career – she was meant to compete in the 1984 Olympics – to devote herself entirely to dance. Her artistic identity was shaped by Dominique Dupuy and Carlson, and her work has appeared in cinema and television, including Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty. Over three decades, Abbondanza/Bertoni have explored tragedy, Zen practices, acoustic masks, danced haiku, and a wide choreographic spectrum. Their recent trilogy on identity includes Idem (2022), Femina (2023), and now Epiphania, premiering at Teatro del Parco.
How dance has changed over the decades
Looking back, I was incredibly young when I began. Dance contains many universes, and in dance theatre and research dance the changes have been immense. Personally, my evolution has mirrored the transformation of my body, my experiences, the way life has shaped me. But on a broader level, the upheavals of the late 20th century and the early 2000s have profoundly altered society and, inevitably, artistic languages. What I notice today is a strong shift toward the conceptual and performative: works built around a predetermined idea rather than the deep, exploratory process that once defined artistic creation. Instead of venturing into the unknown, into the layers of form and consciousness, many works now start from a thesis and remain trapped in it. The result is often cold, repetitive, and distant from the poetic, investigative essence of art.
Art losing its cathartic dimension
It’s as if art is now expected to perform tasks that belong to politics or sociology. Instead of guiding us into the depths of consciousness, many performances endlessly reiterate ideas without transforming them into experience. I often read the programme notes afterward and discover a rich conceptual framework that the performance never managed to embody. At the same time, we have extraordinary dancers whose technical brilliance becomes strangely flat, almost televisual. Technique alone cannot replace the emotional, communal experience that theatre should offer. When I go to the theatre, I want to be struck, not out of masochism, but because theatre is a shared human ritual. Today I sense a desire to keep distance, to avoid vulnerability.
Youth, the internet, and cultural homogenization
This distancing is also a product of our time. The internet has homogenized everything: it offers wonders, but it also pushes us onto a surface where we all move in the same direction. Words like poetry, pathos, love feel outdated, almost embarrassing to bring onstage. And so many performances become unbearably dull. Sometimes I think: if this is what performativity has become, then let theatres function like open space: come and go freely. If a piece is built on endless repetition, spectators should not be forced to remain seated for a predetermined duration.
Interpretations of your work
I’m always happy when audiences share what they see in our pieces. Michele and I have always believed that our works must remain open, allowing each viewer to find their own meaning. But no, the references people sometimes mention were not the starting point for this project. The real origin lies in recent years of working on identity. While choreographing, I found myself separating male and female bodies, which sparked a desire to focus specifically on the feminine. I began from the objectification of women: women are rarely treated as neutral persons; they are sexualized, represented, not recognized as thinkers. I wanted to reclaim the body – not the idea – as the instrument of my art.
On Femina and Epiphania
Femina was a work of intense light: white, obsessive, immersive. Epiphania is its opposite: darkness, blackness, a more visionary choreography. Through distortion and fragmentation, I wanted to reveal a deeper reality. At first, the women appear only in pieces: limbs, fragments… before emerging as whole figures, though still deformed. This fragmentation mirrors how women are often perceived: never fully, never entirely.
Creative obsessions and studio process
Every creation begins from a different obsession. Life, daily experience, and the world my body moves through are always the essential stimuli. Some works begin with images, others with a specific content. Once the idea is shared with Michele and the cast is formed, everything happens in the studio. The studio can overturn everything. That’s why I believe conceptualism is far from theatre. Theatre is craftsmanship: it depends on the human being who must embody the work. In the end, the dancer becomes the piece.
The origins of Epiphania
It was born from an urgent need, as a woman, to speak about women, and from the desire to explore a more painful dimension than in Femina. I was inspired by Francesca Woodman, the extraordinary photographer who worked on her own body as an elusive presence. I imagined a closed room revealing only micro parts of the body, fragments that surface and become action. The dancers were extraordinary. Behind the ‘room of action’ there is an enormous amount of invisible work.
Dancers discovering the piece
They eventually understood, once I began filming and showing them the recordings. But until their full bodies appear, they cannot grasp the effect. When your whole body is hidden and you must give life to a single forearm, you need immense skill. It’s a fragmented language, unusual for dancers, who are used to being read as whole bodies.
Venice and personal memories
One memory is especially dear: a narrow calle in Giudecca where, in 1988, Michele and I filmed the final scene of Città d’acqua with Carolyn Carlson. We ran in slow motion while he half undressed me. That place still moves me. Venice is a city I don’t know deeply, yet every time I come, I’m overwhelmed by its beauty. And I have Venetian roots: my maternal grandmother was from here. I carry that heritage proudly.