Last Updated on October 17, 2025
An Original, Affecting Blend of Music and Movement
5.0 out of 5.0 starsA work of intense religious fervour, Gesualdo Passione inextricably knits together music and movement in 65 minutes of extraordinary originality. I had never seen anything like it before. Brought to London by Dance Umbrella – stress “dance” – it was described as “a concert” by the Barbican, where it had its one-off performance in the Barbican Hall, which usually hosts music concerts.
A contemporary creation, Gesualdo Passione is inspired by the religious music of the Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo (1566-1613), specifically his Tenebrae Responsoria, which follow the passion of Christ from his night on the Mount of Olives through to his crucifixion and entombment, and were meant to be recited in religious ceremonies over the three days of the passion, from Maundy Thursday through to Holy Saturday.
The complex polyphonic composition is sung a cappella by members of Les Arts Florissants, a France-based group that specialises in Baroque music; the dancers belong to the French Amala Dianor company, named after its director and choreographer.
The genius of this concept lies in having the singers, who know the music by heart, physically involved in the movement in the same way as the dancers are; in other words, the movement appears to generate the music, even while the music dictates the movement.
It’s performed on a dark stage, bare but for a raised platform set against a backlit backcloth and two rows of flickering, colour-changing, vertical neon bars unevenly spaced and placed on either side of the stage. As it starts, a Christ figure (dancer Damiano Bigi), stands barefoot and draped in white, silently facing out.
Slowly, singers and dancers file in, all wearing long black costumes reminiscent of priests’ cassocks.
And then a crystalline soprano voice, seemingly disembodied, rises, setting the narrative on the Mount of Olives, where Christ has gone to pray. The Latin words are translated in surtitles projected onto the backcloth.
The music is eloquent, but to fully appreciate its impact, it helps to know a little about the context. Don Carlo Gesualdo was a nobleman, a highly original composer with a tragic personal life. He murdered his first wife and her lover when he found them in flagrante, and after that event, he was overwhelmed by feelings of guilt and regret.
Those feelings find a poignant echo in the versicles of the Responsoria, with their insistent, repetitive meditations on death, guilt, repentance and redemption. The betrayal of Jesus by Judas, in particular, is a ferocious denunciation of the sinner and his deserved punishment; he is damned with the unforgiving, repeated versicle, “it was better if he’d never been born…”
Gesualdo sets the words to music of erudite polyphony, with chromaticisms within rigorous contrapuntal structures, expertly conveyed by the excellent singers of Les Arts Florissants, all deserving of a name check: director and tenor Paul Agnew, sopranos Miriam Allan and Hannah Morrison, contralto Mélodie Ruvio, tenor Sean Clayton and bass-baritone Edward Grint.
Amala Dianor, originally a hip-hop dancer, created a highly effective choreography that combines classical, modern, and street dance, its variations echoing the contrasts within the music. Besides Damiano Bigi, Dianor is well served by three powerful dancers: Elena Thomas, Dexter Bravo and Clément Nikiema.
In a sequence where they dance before the body of the dead Christ, they add to the music by rhythmically stomping their feet, in yet another inspired interplay of music and movement.
The choreography never seeks a simplistic translation of words into movement, but it does regularly create tableaux that illustrate the biblical story. Particularly effective is the Pietá that follows the descent from the cross.
A word of praise, too, for Xavier Lazarini, whose lighting design respected the dark solemnity of the work, yet created varied atmospheres; his use of contralight and silhouette offered especially expressive effects.
Gesualdo Passione does Dance Umbrella, DU25, proud. It is the kind of original, solid, engaging European work that is not often seen in this country, the type that used to make up the bulk of the annual festival for most of its 47 years, before a more recent option led it to become more of an umbrella than a dance festival. Here’s hoping for a return to form with more similar programming next year.
Gesualdo Passione was at Barbican Hall on 16 October 2025
Barbican Centre
Silk Street
London, EC2Y 8DS
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