ENERGY BOOST - Dansmagazine
September 14, 2026
by Ruth Naber
Four Mediterranean choreographers present their work in ENERGY, Introdans’ autumn programme. “In Tagadà, energy is the life force we feel when we experience joy,” says the young Italian maker Sofia Nappi. Fellow countryman Aristide Rontini explores, in the creation of his world premiere, “the tangible energy that runs through you when you find something both attractive and frightening.”
There is also a second world premiere, by Greek choreographer Andonis Foniadakis. And from Spanish choreographer Gustavo Ramírez Sansano, ENERGY features Flabbergast (2001).
Playfulness
Nappi and Rontini share more about the choreographies they worked on with Introdans’ dancers this summer. Sofia Nappi is artistic director of her company Komoco in Florence, Italy. There she developed her signature, intuitive, and theatrical approach, influenced among other things by Gaga, the movement language of Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin. She has a busy international practice. This interview takes place from Taiwan, where she is working with final-year dance students at Taipei National University of the Arts. “It’s beautiful to see how these exceptionally precise, hardworking dancers open themselves up to lightness and playfulness.” A few weeks earlier, she cast the dancers for her choreography Tagadà in Arnhem. “I noticed a hunger in the dancers that inspired me — an openness to young, fresh energy.”
Turntable
Nappi originally created Tagadà for Staatsballett Hannover, where it premiered in 2023. The title of the piece is also the name of an Italian fairground ride: a huge, flat, rimmed disc. You can sit against the edge and hold on to it. That’s necessary once the disc rises up and starts spinning and jolting at high speed. “If you move with your weight and release the tension in your body, you can even stand during a ride — although that is dangerous,” says Nappi. The ride plays a symbolic role in the piece. “There’s a round platform on stage, in muted colours. It resembles the tagadà, but seen from above it also resembles the earth. This is the dancers’ living environment. The essence of the piece is: by letting go, by observing the wild ride that life can sometimes be, we can still keep our footing. You don’t have to fight the chaos to remain standing.”
Groove
“There are a few very fast group sections in the choreography. The more relaxation and enjoyment the dancers allow themselves there, the closer they get to the source of life, movement, and rhythm.” Nappi also calls this source groove, or energy. “In the creative process of Tagadà, I made a connection with the electronic music of Daft Punk. It’s upbeat, repetitive, and light. This became the basis for selecting the other pieces of music. In the end, Tagadà is a journey through different phases of life, very light in character.”
Fragile, sensual, a little crazy
Like Nappi, Rontini worked with Introdans for the first time as one of the ten choreographers for HubClub’23. Back then, each of them created a short choreography in which Introdans dancers, together with a variety of guest dancers, swirled across the stage to capture nightlife in all its facets. A recurring theme in Rontini’s work is showing the identities a body carries. Something he lets audiences experience in a poetic, sensory way in his solo Lampyris Noctiluca (2023). The choreographer gives this interview from an Italian studio, where he is working on a restaging of the solo. In Arnhem, he has just finished a short working period with the four dancers he has cast for his premiere at Introdans. “The dancers I’m creating with now have very different movement qualities, ranging from fragile and sensual to a bit crazy. At some point in the process, they lost a bit of control. That was surprising — and that’s exactly what I’m looking for.”
Tangible
“For this new piece, we’re exploring the state the body is in when it’s pulled back and forth between pleasure and fear. We also explore those emotions separately. My inspiration comes from experiences where I felt drawn to something I was also afraid of. That created an almost tangible energy in my body. The skin, the largest organ of our body, becomes sensitive under emotional tension. How we perceive closeness to something or someone through this membrane between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ — that’s something we’re exploring too.”
Fluid and changeable
Rontini is committed to ensuring that a diversity of dancers’ bodies is welcomed within the Italian and international dance sector. What’s distinctive about his own body is that his arms differ in length. He is part of Al.Di.Qua. Artists (Alternative Disability Quality Artists), a group of Italian artists working to eliminate discrimination — including well-meaning discrimination — against dancers’ bodies that deviate from the norm. How does Rontini contribute to this group’s mission with his new choreography for Introdans? “It’s a meaningful statement that I, as a guest choreographer and artist with a disability, get to work with an established company like Introdans. I see dance as a human experience. In my working method, I give tasks that different dancers can embody in their own way. For the dancers I work with, the process may not be entirely familiar, since the material I offer through my body requires some adaptation on their part. Audiences may experience refinement and pleasure as well as a sense of fear in my choreography. All of that exists within us. I see emotions as the fluid part of identity. They tell us who we are. Partly that’s fixed, but it’s also changeable.”