Battuta

BARTABAS: “The show Battuta is a come-back to the past. In making my early shows I derived inspiration from the Eastern-European motifs and now I am coming back to those if only imaginary sources”.
“For us there is no such notion as ‘heritage’. But we are doing our best to remain faithful. The title of the show, Battuta, contains the root ‘battu’, which means ‘the beat’, or ‘beating out the rhythm’. We endeavored to connect the idea of rhythm with swagger, boldness, audacity and zeal. This show calls for wild rhythms, for freedom and risk…”
Employed in the show are a string quintet from Moldavia and a folk band from Transylvania. The funeral and ritualistic music they play can be by no means referred to as mournful. “May public have the impression that the show runs faster than the music”…
Battuta in Italian means “jest” and Bartabas deliberately emphasizes this, inducing his audiences to laugh, smile and never take themselves too seriously”.

… The time of the gypsies has come for Zingaro. In Bartabas’s last fantasy, Battuta, the hell train races round the arena in the rhythm of the gallop and so does life itself. Weddings and funerals, violins in dispute with brasses, lights and shades, day and night, sunrise and sunset: the violin weeps and then falls into reverie…
“Zingaro”, the horses and their master engage the audience into the reckless race uphill and downhill, to the exotic music of the celestial spheres. Battuta is madness and terrific speed… The mad gallop round the arena, chasing life and leaving life behind… The audience is in raptures… Who makes this happen? The horses, appearing as gorgeous, glossy, brawny, magnificent and audacious nobles… As the audience is filling up the circus tent the horses are grouped in the middle of the arena relishing in the torrent of water falling from a height. And then the music starts to play and the thrilling race begins… The show betrays affinity with the characters of Mack Sennett’s silent movies, Tex Avery’s comical cartoons, Fellini’s imagery and Sun Ra’s jazz improvisations. One may also come to think of Picasso’s or rather Toulouse-Lotrec’s paintings…
After the show one has the feeling that it has all flashed by like in a dream. The sand is there but the spring of water is gone… Neurasthenics and professionals, virtuous citizens and nominees for nominations – they all make haste to see Battuta for everything is going to change…

This time the Zingaro equestrian theatre has undertaken to tell the story of the Moldavian and Romanian gypsies... These vagrant violins and these striking tunes – simple, furious, homeless as they are… The violent vitality of the Zingaro troupe looks like an unbelievable exception from the rules against the background of the modern theatre’s predilection for complaining about life when heroes are made by those who most eloquently tell how dreadful their lives are. Zingaro is telling us the tale about the thrills of itinerant existence and this tale is so enchanting that mothers should better keep an eye on their children lest they should run away with the gypsies.