Divenire animale della danza. Corpi e politiche nel Sessantotto romano di Simone Forti

The performance Danze costruzioni by Simone Forti in L’Attico of Piazza di Spagna, dated 30 October 1968, has epochal significance in both aesthetic and political terms. Firstly, it marks the beginning of a continuing collaboration between Fabio Sargentini and the other performers of the New York Judson Group, who will be invited to the garage in via Beccaria in the following years. Moreover, Simone Forti’s research is deeply transversal and embodies the contamination with musical experimentation and visual creativity. The idea of integrating any type of material into dance comes from the experience of the Judson Group, which included painters, sculptors and composers. This vision finds a particular consonance with the operative and laboratory conception of the exhibition space by Fabio Sargentini. In the evening that followed Danze costruzioni, Simone Forti acts in dialogue with the Musica Elettronica Viva group in other «situations». One of the most emblematic performances is Sleepwalkers, inspired by the observation of animals at the zoo of Rome. The exploration of the body here leads to a proliferation of minor languages that can be compared to Deleuze’s interpretation of Kafka: one does not write for the animals, but in place of the animals, with the intent of bringing language to its limit. Therefore, a possible sense of Simone Forti’s performance consists precisely in the limit of the language of dance, that asks “what can a body do” by merging the body with the animal.