Save the last dance for me

How do you revive a dance that is about to disappear? When the Italian choreographer Alessandro Sciarroni became interested in the polka chinata in 2018, only five dancers were still practising this dance in Italy. Yet it has spanned the twentieth century: originally performed only by men, this popular dance of seduction – in which the dancers’ embrace gradually allows them to whirl around, knees bent, without letting go – was created in Bologna in the 1900s. In collaboration with Giancarlo Stagni, a dancing master who unearthed and studied videos of polka chinata from half a century ago, Alessandro Sciarroni offers a twirling and physical performance of this dance in Save the last dance for me. Two dancers, Gianmaria Borzillo and Giovanfrancesco Giannini, perform to a techno beat as a way of reviving these almost forgotten steps and adjourning the ‘last dance’ of the polka chinata. 

Source: programme of the CND