nicola galli

In front of us, the underground.
A dark, earthy cavity housing an invisible, industrious ecosystem of organisms engaged in the complex process of constant connection, exchange and transformation of matter.
Starting from the sensorial, perceptive, cognitive and communicative abilities that constitute the connecting element between the biological kingdoms, the creation ULTRA offers a view of a hidden world, bringing to light a transformative process embodied by two electric bodies, inhabitants in transit and custodians of an archive of knowledge.
The atavistic separation between human and non-human takes shape in the scenic vision of a contemporary chasm as disenchantment, twilight and the fall of human hegemony over the world, in an attempt to redefine the boundaries between kingdoms and mend the asymmetries of the present.
In the close relationship between body, sound, vocality, light and smell, a dramaturgical plot is substantiated, aimed at questioning the human and proposing an unprecedented order of perception. Including 'other' knowledge, visions, times and languages in our lives allows us to welcome unexpected relationships and open up to a possible new system of communication that aspires to redefine the concept of intelligence.
ULTRA encourages us to imagine ourselves as ulta-humans, united in a momentum of collective contamination, to recognise the regenerative power of relationships between things and to perceive a balanced and symbiotic organisation of the world.

Nicola Galli

"In the panorama of young Italian contemporary dance (or physical theatre), Galli is notable for research that is also characterised by craftsmanship, which in this new 'Ultra' manifests itself in a total black landscape.
[...] 'Ultra' questions the audience through the absence of words and signs with which to explain and clarify. Galli's vision - beyond pessimism - is ruthless and mysterious. The Italian artist is the creator of a theatre of enigmas and in this case we do not feel like spectators in front of a sci-fi dystopia: that black magma is our future, those ultra-human beings moving like worms under the ground are us, if we continue not to take care of what surrounds us."

Andrea Pocosgnich [ www.teatroecritica.net - 06/2023 ]

"Nicola Galli, together with Massimo Monticelli, proposes in 'Ultra' a choreographic vision of an underworld, a cavern in which luminous crystals show a moving terrain, in which two undefined figures act, called upon to transform that matter and themselves as the substance of a life that generates and re-generates, where everything appears dead and dark. In a rarefied and obscure dimension, Nicola Galli's action insists on an installation dimension that offers no way out and asks to be accepted in full or rejected in full. Nicola Galli is a performer of acute intelligence, but above all engaged in removing himself from his works, so that they live independently of himself. Perhaps 'Ultra' is an auroral example of this, it lights up something, something that transcends the dance, transcends the performer and the performance becomes a place, a space, a vision that unfolds before our eyes, that asks to be welcomed and perhaps, at a later time, interpreted, experienced."

Nicola Arrigoni [ www.sipario.it - 07/2023 ]

"The scene of 'ULTRA' by Nicola Galli is animated by a desertified world in which the human figure appears small, fragile, black, moving illuminated by totems in backlighting that recall the cinematography of Stanley Kubrick and his monolith; 'ULTRA 'is set in a dark world, illuminated by monolith-like lights that recall urban landscapes, miniature skyscrapers raised to the sky between which the choreographer and the other dancer who inhabit the installation move.
[...] Here, however, fragile humanity seems to have returned to a troglodyte level, crawling inside an underground universe, returning to an almost entirely non-verbal phase and to movements that it is difficult to establish how much they have to do with the human, and how much more with the animal.
The show maintains ample visual suggestion and a rhythm marked by a play of light that radiates both from the small parallelepipeds and from two giant brackets at the back of the stage, which almost seem to leave an empty space for existence."

Renzo Francabandera [ www.paneacquaculture.net - 09/2023 ]

Nicola Galli