Chiara Bersani: L’Animale review

In a brown, sequinned top that catches the light, Bersani begins by lying on a low octagonal platform, turned away from the audience. Her right arm is draped over her body as elegantly and deliberately as a swan’s wing. The work starts slowly, as we adjust to the cool peace of the venue, the city’s noises receding. A programme note tells us Bersani responds to the audience and, at first, it is the rhythmic noise of her breath that fills the room, later developing into vocal utterances, the beginnings of what could be a word starting with W: way, perhaps, or wave. The movement, when it begins, is gradual and deliberate, as her right arm, still wing-like, extends above her body.

For a long time, Bersani keeps her face away from us, maintaining the focus on her body. When she sits up on the platform, the swanlike shapes of her arms are silhouetted by Valeria Foti’s lighting design against the wall behind her. Eventually, she makes her way around the octagonal platform. The movement is so gradual, so measured, that when she builds to a swan in full flight – on demi pointe, her arms outstretched, the whispers now almost a screech filling the dome above – the effect is startling. At last, her body begins to retreat behind the platform until all that is left is a hand, trying to cling on: a simple yet profoundly moving image of the mortal experience.