How do you make music without instruments? This February, Teatru Manoel welcomes a groundbreaking performance featuring an ensemble of Greek and Italian dancers, accompanied by two Maltese singers, who will do exactly that. Bodyterranean is a dynamic dance show where rhythm and movement take centre stage.
Created by Simone Mongelli, an Italian music artist based in Greece, Bodyterranean is a unique dance and music performance that embraces Mediterranean culture and bodies. It does this by highlighting the most primal musical instrument: the human body itself. Mongelli is also an ethnomusicologist, meaning he studies music within their specific social and cultural contexts, and he has been interested in Maltese music as part of a wider Mediterranean culture for several years. In fact, his Masters research was about the traditional Maltese għana, in particular the spirtu pront style.
Combining traditional Greek and Southern Italian songs with body percussion and choreography, the ensemble will use only their bodies and voices to create their soundtrack. “We can identify two main elements in this project,” explains Mongelli, “on one hand there is my research about tradition, about the universal themes that generate in people from all over the world and their same need to tell stories, to express themselves. On the other hand there is the challenge of using exclusively a single musical instrument, and a very particular one indeed: the body.”
Bodyterranean began its life as a studio album back in 2016, but it soon after transferred to stage, which Mongelli believes is where the project truly belongs, “because body music is something to be both heard and seen, since it involves performing and choreography and needs the energy of a live show, of the interaction with the audience.” Simone Mangelli and the cast of Bodyterranean have performed in Greece, Italy, and Cyprus, and they are excited to bring this show to Malta for the first time. “I’ve been to Malta several times before and I have loved it each time,” Mongelli tells us. “I am sure that this next experience will be a positive one!”
“I hope that in Malta we will create the same touching feeling that we have been experiencing every time we get on stage and perform: a special level of communication and bonding with the audience that is created by this special body-to-body emotional interchange,” says Mongelli. “There is no such experience as feeling your body vibrate in response to another body moving and producing sounds.”
Local vocalists Doreen Galea and Mariele Żammit will join the troupe of dancers to tell stories of joys and sorrows, of love, exile, motherhood, and diversity, stories which people of all cultures and backgrounds can recognise and relate to. The songs in Bodyterranean, stripped down to the purest form of body and voice, tell stories that erase differences and cry out for equality and peace. And Simone Mongelli has promised a few surprise additions to the repertoire that are sure to please local audiences.
Bodyterranean will be performed at Teatru Manoel on Saturday 7 and Sunday 8 Februarry at 7.30pm. Tickets can be purchased at https://teatrumanoel.mt/event/bodyterranean/ or by calling the Teatru Manoel Box Office at (+356) 21246389.
