The final performance of the second artistic residency of Playing Memories took place at the Conservatorio de L’Aquila on Friday, 17 January at 6:45 PM, before heading to Georgia for a performance on 20 January at the Tbilisi State Conservatoire.
Playing Memories was a project of experimentation and creative research, born from the encounter of twelve young talents selected among the best students from the most prestigious higher education institutions in the arts.
The cast, consisting of seven Italians, one Brazilian, one Sri Lankan, and two Georgians from the Tbilisi State Conservatoire, spent 15 days in artistic residency at the Conservatorio Alfredo Casella in the city of L’Aquila, with the aim of creating a performance of music, dance, and visual arts.
Forty minutes of performance — a brief moment, suspended between past and present — in which memory became the protagonist. Playing Memories was an immersive experience, a visual and emotional experiment, where the timeless melodies of great Italian composers resonated under the fingers of a jazz ensemble, reinterpreting them in a new, vibrant, and contemporary form.
But it was not just music. It was movement, gesture, and overlapping images that told stories.
Dance intertwined with the music, images blended with bodies, and together they reimagined the most iconic scenes from eight masterpieces of Italian cinema.
Every dance step, every musical note, every visual stroke became a reference, a game between what had been and what might have been. Playing Memories revealed itself as an ode to memory, to the magic of cinema that had marked entire generations, and to its immortal music, which helped to spread the Italian brand worldwide.
It was an experience that did not merely revive the emotions of a film, but invited us to view them with new eyes, to feel them as if for the first time, and to remember them as if for the last.
Playing Memories was a co-production that brought together the forces of the Saint Louis College of Music, the Tbilisi State Conservatoire, and the Conservatorio Alfredo Casella of L’Aquila. A collaboration that, like the performance itself, became a bridge between cultures, disciplines, and generations.
17 January 2025, 6:45 PM – Auditorium, Conservatorio A. Casella L’Aquila, Via Francesco Savini, 7 – L’Aquila
20 January 2025 – Tbilisi State Conservatoire, 10 Alexander Griboedov St.
ARTISTS/PERFORMERS
Music: Francesca Feci | voice and artistic project leader
Francesco Negri | piano
Davide Ballanti | guitar and synth
Francesco Rapinesi | double bass
Demna Amashukeli | drums
Tamar Rtveliashvili | saxophone
Dance: Giada Primiano | dancer/choreographer
Martina Tordiglione | dancer/choreographer
Matteo Esposito | dancer/choreographer
Gabriele Crosta | dancer
Visual Art: Maneesha Ronaly Kuruwitaarachchi
Pedro Henrique de Moura Simplício
Tutors: Maria Grazia Fontana | Music
Revaz Kiknadze | Music
Sopio Murusidze | Music
Alessandra Sini | Dance and Choreography
Marta Jovanovic | Visual Art
Fabio Cocifoglia | Theatre Direction
Films
La strada
Directed by Federico Fellini, music by Nino Rota, 1954
Il medico della mutua – Marcia di Esculapio
Directed by Luigi Zampa, music by Piero Piccioni, 1968
La ciociara
Directed by Vittorio De Sica, music by Armando Trovajoli, 1960
La vita è bella
Directed by Roberto Benigni, music by Nicola Pi