Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi: Harleking

The second performance, part of the Frontiers dance programme, for this piece by Ginevra Panzetti and Enrico Ticconi. Harleking is a choreographic work that was first seen in 2018 and has since been featured at several dance festivals; its subject is a harlequinade style of mannered gestures through jerky, robotic movements that manage to combine a courtly formality with a sense of danger and mistrust. There are obvious references to the Harlequin of the Commedia dell’Arte, a sly servant moved by an insatiable hunger, a trickster who ultimately derives from a devil character in medieval Passion Plays. Harleking‘s mode of communication has something of ancient wall decorations in which monstrous figures blend in with elegant ornament – figures which can evoke amusement without any joy.