Culture

1st Year, Number Five

Gillian Rilley and Ivan Manzoni, Winners of the International Prize Scritture d'Acqua

Award Ceremony and Dinner to be
held December 4th, in Fonteanellato
» Versione italiana

This year the international prize Scritture d'Acqua («Writings on Water») will be awarded to Gillian Rilley (Great Britain) and Ivan Mazoni (Italy). The organizers invite to the ceremony and successive dinner in honor of the two winners on December 4th in Fontenellato (Parma).

Ivan Manzoni has a special position in the world in contemporary dance. First as a dancer and then as a choreographer, his work is characterized by a precise and almost manic attention to the aesthetics of movement and the study of the relationship between dancers and machines, which are considered partners and amplifiers of the kinetic potential of the human body.

In 1996, after having received numerous recognitions (among which the diploma of «Professeur d'Etat» for dance in France), Ivan Manzoni left dancing and dedicated himself to choreography and teaching. He began to plan and to utilize strange mechanical devices that interact with his dancers: With his show «Resistant Materials», a new genre was born around which he constructed the company Resistant Materials Dance Factory.

The first version of «Waterwall», a breathtaking water show, premiered in 1998 and continues to have great success with both critics and the public all over the world. This show is the principle reason for the conferring of the award to him. The award also wants to recognize the technological and scientific content of Ivan Manzoni's work that manifests itself completely in the research of aerial work developed the last years: in choreographies with which he explores the dimension of height, making himself the protagonist of large shows. Like the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin; the presentation of the new Fiat 500 in Turin in 2007; the reopening of the bell tower of San Marco in Venice and the opening of the 2008 Mediterranean Games in Pescara.

Gillian Riley has done historical studies at Cambridge and teaches at the University of Reading, where, with the study of graphic art, she developed a passion for gastronomy. This has allowed her to undertake a double career as a designer and food historian and to participate regularly at international conventions like Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery.

In 1989, with the translation of seventeenth-century treaty Frutta, rbe, e Vegetali d'Italia («Fruit, Herbs, and Vegetables of Italy») by Giacomo Castelvetro, Riley has put the basis for a series of unique volumes in their conception. Renaissance Recipes (1993), Impressonist Picnics ( 1993), The Dutch Table (1994), A Feast for the Eyes, the National Gallery Cookbook (1997) are, in fact, books in which the great painting combines perfectly with the culinary arts. Kitchen interiors and still lives, set-up tables and triumphs of crustaceans, scenes of fishing and market bences are unique motives to present precious recipes and artistic menus.

Visual hymns to the throat in which water is almost always the protagonist. In all parts of the world, but especially in Italy. Just think of bread and of pizza, but also of soup, pasta, and rice. That is to say of all the plates «Made in Italy» that today have a worldwide reputation, but that already in Renaissance courts assumed a gastronomic as well as artistic primacy. Just like Gillian Riley recently reaffirmed in the translation of Libro de Arte Coquinaria by Maestro Martino (2004) and in the Oxford Companion to Italian Food (2007): her last – for the moment – act of love towards Italian food.

(translated by Justine Levesque)

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