« A true choreographic creation is that Damiano Ottavio Bigi and Alessandra Paoletti have prepared under the title That’s All Folks! He is the only one in Italy who can boast an extraordinary curriculum, having worked for years with Pina Bausch and now with the Greek Papaioannou, the two absolute masters of dance theatre of the last decades.

Four dancers (two oriental, one American and Bigi himself) suspended in space, without indications of place and time, faced the possibility of a deep search (perhaps even of themselves). It is that spring that pushes them to move, harmonious but without apparent coordination. It is beautiful to discover, in a short time, that it is precisely dance that allows them vitality and precision. A sort of laboratory is born (intellectual as well as physical) that involves the audience as much as the four “heroes” on stage. Without hiding illusions and difficulties of that “search” if not impossible certainly tiring, to which the energies poured out without sparing go. It is a small “inner journey” for the spectator, who can discover in dance not only pleasure and reassurance but also new paths into future worlds. »

[Gianfranco Capitta / Il Manifesto]

« A bit of irony, some playfulness, a flavour of American country music and a portion of visual poetry are the main ingredients of That’s All Folks by Fritz Company (dancer and choreographer Damiano Ottavio Bigi and director Alessandra Paoletti). While the slogan That’s all Folks signals the end of Looney Tunes episodes, here each ending forms the beginning of a new situation. With minimal scenography and an atmospheric light design, the scenes, connected through smooth transitions, evoke natural and emotional landscapes, outer and inner, palpable and oneiric, a universe inhabited by a multicultural cast originating from different parts of the world – Asia, United States, Italy. The performers sit around a white ring like silent spectators at a play; the light paints a rising ‘black hole’ in the colour of a pinkish full moon and casts reflections of sea waves on the performers. Mary Wigman’s Witch Dance seems to be resurrected in a solo for Taiwanese dancer Ching-Ying Chien. In That’s All Folks, geometry, cosmology and form become a pretext to refer to something personal that resonates differently with each of us – an echo of the enigmatic visual and movement language of Pina Bausch or Dimitris Papaioannou, with whom Bigi has collaborated in the past. »

[Ariadne Mikou / Springback Magazine – Read more]

«… The bodies move in and out like a whirlwind of particles, slowly or bumpily, alone, in pairs, in groups, observing each other, vibrating dizzily in different directions — even pausing, poised, on a rolled, then stretched out mirrored carpet — creating an upturned time and an abstract place without references, forms that dissolve and change according to the gaze. Vigorous, fluid, acrobatic or calm, the energy of the dancers – they are the extraordinary Ching-Ying Chien, Issue Park, Faith Prendergast and Bigi, who mix different techniques – imprints signs, lines, rotations in the changing circular space of light, punctuated by the lightness of short personal thoughts, gestural sketches and musical pieces that question the distinction between reality, perception and representation. Past, present and future, dream and play, come together in the abstract evocation of a choreography that, in the finale of an American folk song sung by all, seems to tell us: “That’s all folks!” »

[Giuseppe Distefano / Danza&Danza]