Book name: DANCE NAKED — LIKE TRUTH: MY UNAPOLOGETIC LIFE
Author: Patrizia Cerroni
Published by: Om, Price- Rs 395
Patrizia Cerroni’s work is at once a memoir and an artistic manifesto. A danseuse of international acclaim, Cerroni began her training at the age of six owing to her Milanese mother’s enthusiasm. Even though she later enrolled in the National Academy of Dance in Rome, Cerroni soon began transgressing its “Fascist-style hardness” and the formal aesthetics of classical ballet, which she describes as a dance that “represses, compresses, oppresses, distorts, sickens you”. Throughout the memoir, Cerroni emerges as a relentless seeker of freedom, reflecting on the psychological elements of dance that are shaped by inspirations, collaborations, relationships, spiritual encounters, desires and creative expressions.
The memoir situates her technique within a broader historical and cultural context — the artistic ferment in the Europe of 1970s that provided a fertile ground for experimentation. Trained under influential modern dance figures such as Jean Cébron and Merce Cunningham and at the Martha Graham School in New York, she absorbed a variety of contemporary approaches before forging a style that was unmistakably her own which led her to found her company, Patrizia Cerroni & I Danzatori Scalzi, in 1974. She underlines the need for a dancer to strip away artifice, allowing movement to emerge from the deepest layers of experience to uncover authenticity — this urgency is best encapsulated in the book’s title, “dance naked — like truth”. In her production, But Do You Really Want To Understand Something About Us Women??! — the image is on the book cover — and in several other performances, Cerroni challenges the tendency to view the body through the lens of morality, convention or sexuality. In her performances, nudity becomes the site of truth and emotional exposure rather than a spectacle.
Her discussions on choreography are illuminating as she refers to her dancers as “interpreters”, valuing improvisation yet refraining from romanticising it. Equally compelling are her accounts of collaboration. Interactions with musicians such as Zakir Hussain, Charles Mingus, Giacinto Scelsi as well as with film-makers like Michelangelo Antonioni are transformed into moments of creative exchange. Cerroni’s dance philosophy is nurtured by her experiences in India where she has performed several times.
The memoir also examines love as a powerful creative force. Although there is a separate chapter on her enduring relationship with Guido Paolo Menocci, an architect whom she married a few days before his death, Cerroni writes openly about her other romances and platonic partnerships that evolved her understanding of herself and her work. Dance Naked occasionally sacrifices the critical distance necessary for self-reflection. But reading about the conviction of an artist who has spent a lifetime in artistic enquiries can be an enriching experience for any rasika.