This Don Giovanni fresh out of the starting gate, clear-spoken and straight as an arrow in pure Scandinavian style amounts to a reading (of a story) with the eyes of today and the new millennium that has absorbed the lessons of psychoanalysis and questions the identities and double natures of each and every one of us: man, woman, or what have you.
Elisa Guzzo Vaccarino - Il Giorno – 11.10.2020

The language created by the Swedish choreographer together with the dancers is delicate and incisive at the same time. The score alternates moments of intimacy with choral scenes: the joyfulness of the wedding is succeeded by the decadence of the carnival atmosphere until the final scene, which may be interpreted in various ways by the spectator: is this a descent into hell or a succumbing to one’s own personal ghosts and demons?
Once again, the Reggio Emilia company’s dancers confirm their versatility and skills of technique and interpretation. And as on every occasion, the spectator remains impressed not only by the quality of their gesture but also by their chemistry as a group, the way they move as one, and the energy they transmit to the audience.
Its density of movement and different shades of meaning make this Don Juan a performance to see and see again: Aterballetto has placed another new winning bet.
Federica Pezzoli - Estense.com – 11.10.2020

The dance in this performance is eloquent and timely, and offers its description with the essence of crisp, evocative gestures, supporting them with dashes of expressionism.
And wherever dance is not entrusted with the signification of dreams and desires, objects – a box, a carriage, unmistakably Pop in origin evoking Inger’s theatrical re and poetic references to his master, Mats Ek – do the task as well.
The influence of an acclaimed humanist choreographer is also evident in a number of the stylistic features of the dance (the choral dynamics, certain gestures of the hands).
The result is a clearly legible, spectacular, and enjoyable presentation.
The sixteen excellent Aterballetto dancers devour the stage with famished energy, playing different roles one after another with exceeding versatility.
Silvia Poletti - Il Sole 24 Ore - 19.10.2020

Besides being an example of narrative dance worthy of comparison with those of masters of the art Jiri Kylián and Mats Ek, this piece offers new points of conjecture regarding the most world’s most infamous womanizer.
Constructed in the form of a theatrical piece in acts, cadenced by encounters/clashes with female figures, Inger’s choreography entwines playfulness with funeral tragedy, seducing the audience with lighthearted compositions of lively festive scenes and the movements of the courtship dance for which the scenographer Curt Allen Wilmer invented the suggestive solution of modular parallelepipeds painted with symbolic black and white faces.
The piece was not an easy one for Saul Daniele Ardillo and the fifteen other Aterballetto dancers to interpret, all of whom proved themselves versatile and mature, in harmony with one another.
Roberto Giambrone - Il Sole 24 Ore -. 01.11.2020

Twelve blocks as high as totem poles fill the set created by Curt Allen Wilmer and continuously redesign the configuration of the stage. Like towering walls, they represent the physical and psychological barriers that separate us from others.
The audience is literally swept away by the tale the piece tells, the work of playwright Gregor Acuña-Pohl.
The work abounds with enthralling, enthusing choral scenes, such as the masked ball, the popular wedding.
The various pas de deux featuring the seducer and his victims are particularly intense and emotional, as are the exchanges between Don Juan and his servant, Leporello. The choreography is rich in fantasy, variety, and expressive nuance. The contemporary dance steps are characterized by an emphatic, nearly shouted gestuality that fluency and eloquence add to the narrative.

(Aterballetto’s Don Juan can be considered) a new work because of the new analysis given to both the figure of Don Juan and the theme of gender relations that are of such current interest in today’s #metoo epoch. The mother figure that opens the story assumes central importance, suggesting that the protagonist’s psychological problems arise from his being abandoned at early age. More than anything else, this piece intends to tell the story of a human being who was also a victim himself of an unmanageable past.
This sensitive, deeper, more subtle psychological analysis is countered onstage by all the cruelty and violence that only the unconscious of a schizophrenic can generate.
Its success in rendering the relationship between perpetuator and victim so physical gives Johan Inger’s Don Giovanni the force of a punch in the stomach.
…An invitation for all of us to consider such complex and multi-faceted themes in greater depth. Nothing is purely white or all black, and here we are miles away from the superficiality and various forms of instrumentalization to which we grow accustomed daily by today’s mass media.
Arianna Piccolo - Artribune – 03-11.2020

The impressive, smoothly flowing creation of Johan Inger’s ….benefits from the hand of playwright Gregor Acuña-Pohl.
Inger uses movement to dig into the innermost human feelings and lay out a convincing dance story, frame after frame. His plot is immediately readable, and Aterballetto shines in all its splendor.
(Don Juan) flees from his first love, Elvira, and seduces Zerlina. This is where the story’s first Feminist overtones appear: Zerlina objects to being simply seduced and abandoned….Everything happens in the lively scene of the commoners’ wedding, with duets inspired by folklore and the entire company and its various new and excellent members on stage dancing. This provides a counterpoint to the scene in which the first pangs of conscience appear in the heart of the protagonist, whose personality— in this version— is split into an alter ego, and it is Philippe Kratz who plays the part of Leo, alias Leporello, the protagonist’s “positive” ego and moral conscience that attempts in vain to reform Don Juan’s behavior.
Don Juan brings all his cunning to the masquerade he succeeds in pulling off so well at the aristocrats’ Gala Ball, which offers another glittering moment of choral ballet.
The final scene is rich in effect.
Maria Luisa Buzzi - DANZA&DANZA INTERNATIONAL - 12-2020

Johan Inger…..regaled Aterballetto a finely-crafted, fascinating and profound Don Juan that showcased the talents of this reinvented and highly motivated company rich in interesting personalities that returned to the City of Ferrara stage for a fresh start in evident style.
Inger opted for a stirringly contemporary narrative style and a language with a power of expression of its own capable of emerging from Mozart’s storyline.
In the end, Don Juan is left alone, sinking into a sulfurous miasma of soot falling from above.
Sergio Trombetta - LA STAMPA - 16-10-2020

The Italian dance season kicked off with the debut performance of Aterballetto’s Don Juan.
The performance renews the company’s collaboration with one of today’s most renowned choreographers, Johan Inger.
Together with the playwright Gregor Acuña-Pohl, the Swedish artist chose one of literature’s most mysterious and complex figures, Don Giovanni …bringing a psychoanalytic reading to this personality. Inger’s serial-seducer is a man who both carries the maternal figure within him and sees himself in a better alter ego, Leo/Leporello. Above and beyond its literary quality, the intelligence of this reading appears in the resolution of the conflict through a taut and tough, theatrical choreography immersed in an unreal, dreamlike setting where black platforms transform into partitions, beds, coffins, and other characters disappear and reappear. Women are portrayed less fearful than in previous narrations of this Don Juan, who is more human, less gigantic, before he ends up drowning in the vanity of his demons. The emotion is provide by the excellence of Aterballetto: sixteen dancers…all talented, masters of themselves, and assured in Inger’s syntactic complexity, which becomes flowing, rhythmic prose in both the duets and choral scenes.
Anna Bandettini - la Repubblica – 15.10.2020

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