Let’s Talk Futurism with Massimiliano Finazzer Flory

Giulia Madron (May 13, 2014)
Massimo Finazzer Flory will pay homage to Italian Futurism with the “Great Futurist Evening.” The show will be in the Big Apple on May 21st.


Massimiliano Finazzer Flory is back in the US, and once again sets out to entertain the American public with his new show “Great Futurist Evening.”



The tour will visit many importants cities around the US. After its big debut in Washington on May 12th, it will move on to Dartmough, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Houston. (For more information about the tour dates visit: http://www.i-italy.org/node/37926) target="_blank">>>>



This is the third time in the US for Finazzer Flory. In In 2011-2012 he came with I Promessi sposi (The Betrothed), in 2013 he brought Pinocchio, storia di un burattino (Pinocchio, the Story of a Puppet), and now with Gran Serata Futurista.



We interviewed Massimiliano Finazzer Flory on the occasion of his upcoming show.




It started during the mid 1900s when “The City Rises” of Umberto Boccioni instead of coming to Milan went in direction of New York and the MoMa. When I saw it exhibited for the first time more than 20 years ago I felt I had to contribute in some way to an important movement such as Futurism whose founding father was not a painter who exhibited in a museum but a revolutionary poet: Filippo Tommaso Marinetti.  



We can say that the US tour is a homage to the Italian avantgarde movement. This year everyone talks about Futurism, from the Guggenheim to CIMA in New York. Your show continues the series of events dedicated to this movement here in the US?



In your opinion, what’s the importance of the Futurist movement and what are its repercussions today?



I will answer you praising the present: the colored universe surrounding Saturn. The second biggest planet of our solar system thanks to the Cassini probe of the NASA appears to us as an incredible colored table that reminds us of Boccioni. Here, Marinetti has been a prophet of the relationship with the technological civilization and its amazing beauties. The inheritance of Futurism was completely realized especially in the US. The immigration without wires of the futurists is among us through wi-fi and skype. Is “the laboratory hung on the bent wires of the clouds.” The beauty that we want as Futurists was and still is the ubiquity, the simultaneity where we feel that time and space died yesterday...Literature anticipated Google, Twitter and Silicon Valley that is the claim of sovereignity of fantasy that becomes an individual and a collective endeavour at the same time. For this reason also from Marinetti’s political perspective we learned that it is possible to combine anarchy and patriotism, the individual and the nation. What did not happen in Italy I think it happens here every day.      



Which were the major stylistic choices (music, choreography, script) in the creation of the show and why?



The rythm. Rythm is everything. Between words and silence, between light and darkness, between memory and oblivion, between step and breath, between life and death. Rythm means putting in scene the experience of a journey. With all its preparation, waits, vicissitudes, the inevitable accidents next to dreams, passions, desires. Next to rythm another criterion is that to give back the atmosphere of that period especially where it seems opposing to Marinetti: decadence. The recent success of Sorrentino with “The Great Beauty” demonstrates that within the collective imaginary Italy to others remains fascinating and excites in the name of a kind of beauty that is just nostalgic.  

 




This is the third time you bring a show to the US. What is your relationship with the US and with the American public?



America is not a geographical indication but rather the location of a modern myth: man who thinks and expresses himself with novelty, summary, clarity, enthusiasm. America represents the freedom of choosing the passion for success, the sense of the big city, the instinct of the record. My relationship with the US is linked to my childhood of an unsatisfied European, of a nomad that needs spaces where there still is a sense of the nation. The American public for me is very important because it has no prejudices, it judges you for what is happening, and in doing so it catches completely the identity of theater which is an ephemeral art and for this reason the most authentic, the closest to life. Actually, more than life.  



Any project for the future?



Yes. In 2015 I will be again in the US. During the first months I will be performing in the most important American cities with a show dedicated to Leonardo Da Vinci, whose biography I interpret through authentic sources. Leonardo is really the icon that unifies humanistic culture and scientific culture, art with technique. The Americans who will go to Milan for the Expo 2015 will have the opportunity to see the preview of the show in New York and other cities.


This is the structure of the performance: it’s an impossible interview of Leonardo done by a journalist of our times, for instance of the New York Times or of CNN, to whom the genius of Da Vinci will answer telling him of his relationship with power, faith, the mysteries of his works, the relationship between painting and music, between civil and military instruments, highlighting the everyday life of that period attacking his enemies, offering us his dreams, his secrets and some advice to better rule our existence.   

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