Vittorio Piovani is a barber in Traversetolo, a village in central Italy. Each Sunday, he dons a chic swimsuit, shines his sneakers, curls his lengthy moustache and goes dancing at a membership in a close-by city, like many different weekend clubbers. Besides Piovani is a 75-year-old grandfather of three, dwelling for a scene that provides him a deep-rooted sense of neighborhood and belonging.
Piovani is a diehard fan of liscio, an Italian music style and dancing scene, with devoted venues referred to as balere, and a fandom that's typically over 50 (extra typically, over 65). In its personal approach, it's a glamorous, wild and countercultural nook of European clubbing. The music is effervescent – with quite a lot of accordion – and the aesthetic is unmistakable: band members put on satin attire and bell-bottom fits, with a lot of shiny material and sequins; patrons costume up as in the event that they had been attending a marriage. “Liscio has all the pieces: a little bit of waltz, a little bit of polka, a little bit of tango and a little bit of slow-dance,” Piovani says contained in the membership, Redas.
Many years in the past, liscio dominated central Italy, particularly the area of Emilia-Romagna, but it surely has gone right into a sluggish decline and now some concern that Covid might need put the ultimate nail within the coffin. Dance halls had been closed, on-and-off, for nearly two years, earlier than they had been allowed to totally reopen when Italy lifted its state of emergency legal guidelines this spring. A few of them had shut down for good; others have reopened, however modified style.
After I go to on a Sunday afternoon, Redas is full and about 150 individuals are lined up even earlier than the venue is open. “Right here we're – for essentially the most half aged folks,” says Ornella, a retired clerk in her 70s. She has been a liscio aficionada since she was younger, when the native Communist celebration organised summer time festivals that included liscio dances. Claudia, 69, a cook dinner, comes twice per week, on Thursday evenings and Sundays, as a result of “ballroom dancing is nice for my well being and takes away my melancholy”.
Lots of the folks at Redas have a particular relationship with the Lucchi-Venturi orchestra, who're taking part in tonight: “After all we additionally hear different orchestras, however this one is particular for us, it’s like there’s no distance between musicians and the viewers,” says Letizia, who follows the orchestra round Italy along with her husband, Massimo. When the band celebrated its twenty fifth anniversary, proper earlier than the pandemic, the couple attended a three-day dancing celebration at a Lake Como resort.
The orchestra’s namesake and accordionist, Barbara Lucchi, is a star – within the Nineteen Eighties she was a frequent visitor on TV. Collectively along with her husband, Massimo Venturi, additionally an accordionist, she leads a band of eight members, for the second reduce right down to 4. Within the Nineteen Nineties, her orchestra was taking part in 300 concert events every year, which had fallen to about 130 earlier than Covid hit: “It was a whole catastrophe, throughout and after the pandemic,” she says. “Liscio artists had been hit the worst.”
True, all reside music was hit by lockdowns and restrictions, however liscio suffered significantly badly as a result of its viewers was extra susceptible to the virus and extra cautious about returning. “We had many losses; members of our public have died,” says Lucchi. “Even now, not everybody looks like coming again, and people who do are dancing much less typically.” Furthermore, liscio is about dancing in couples and is incompatible with social distancing.
Liscio, regarded down on by Italian mainstream tradition as a result of it’s perceived as provincial, low-class and much too camp, has a strongly native and working-class dimension. Its roots are in peasant dancing festivals on the daybreak of the twentieth century, when Carlo Brighi, a violinist who performed with Arturo Toscanini, tailored central European dances, such because the waltz, polka and mazurka, to an Italian style. However the style as it's identified right now was born within the aftermath of the second world conflict, when violinist and composer Secondo Casadei added fashionable parts similar to saxophone, drums and vocalists, and have become a nationwide star. His Nineteen Fifties hit Romagna mia continues to be a basic.
Liscio was the one dance native to Italy that survived the import of American genres, similar to swing and boogie-woogie, says music critic Giulia Cavaliere. Its success, she explains, was in its romantic enchantment: “It’s about dancing and eroticism. The balere had been locations the place ladies dressed as much as entice a companion, and the place dance was a precursor to a kiss.” However there’s additionally a component of sophistication redemption: “For the entire week, you're a farmer or a manufacturing unit employee, however on the weekend you costume up, and for 2 days you've got a unique social position.”
Liscio additional boomed within the Sixties and 70s, with orchestras similar to Vera Romagna, Vittorio Borghesi, and Castellina e Pasi getting huge excursions. The star of that period was Raoul Casadei, Secondo’s nephew, who died final yr aged 83. Remembered as “il re del Liscio,” Casadei was an icon of the 70s, even past the liscio circles, together with his concert events aired on TV, and such a strong family identify that different orchestras randomly took the Casadei identify to trick the general public into believing there was some sort of connection.
However because the Nineteen Nineties, liscio has suffered a gentle, if sluggish, decline – too distinct to resume itself with out shedding its aficionados, however perceived as passé by youthful Italians. “Again within the day, the golf equipment had been at all times full and so many orchestras might discover good work. Now, a giant crowd comes provided that huge names are taking part in,” says Venturi. “This was job, even in the event you performed in a smaller orchestra, however that’s now not the case.” The financial disaster has prompted some orchestras to chop down on prices, even resorting to karaoke backing tracks, whereas others merely swap to extra worthwhile genres similar to Latin American dance.
“Liscio is turning into decrease high quality, extra repetitive,” laments Moreno Conficconi, a clarinettist, vocalist and arranger who lately based, with singer Mauro Ferrara and jazz performer Mirco Mariani, a music venture referred to as Extraliscio aiming at modernising the model, gleefully contaminating it with punk and electronica.
To liscio followers, Conficconi is a legend: he began to play in 1972 and served as head of orchestra to Raoul Casadei, who gave him the nickname of “il biondo,” by which he nonetheless goes right now (even when he was by no means blond). However his fellow Extraliscio crew come from completely different backgrounds and – given liscio’s low cultural standing – they acquired some raised eyebrows. Mariani says that, when different jazz musicians discovered he was doing a liscio venture, “they had been so shocked that they thought I have to be having some affair with a liscio woman. To them it was simply second-class music”.
Extraliscio now get pleasure from some status and have been invited to San Remo, Italy’s most prestigious music competition, however Cavaliere, the critic, doubts that that status will prolong to all the style and says that its decline has deep roots. “Liscio revolved round small communities that gathered in squares and balere, however right now younger folks don’t have that connection to their micro-community – they need to break free from it.”
Conficconi, says that Covid acted “like a guillotine”, to a whole lot of orchestras, and when golf equipment might lastly reopen they didn’t get the general public that they'd hoped for, whereas Venturi says liscio goes to ultimately die: “You don’t discover any younger individual in a balera; the world adjustments.” However Conficconi says hope just isn't misplaced: “It’s a music that brings folks collectively; folks have discovered love dancing liscio. It will probably’t simply disappear.”
Again at Redas Lucchi proclaims: “Now we’re doing the polka problem!” The gang erupts in cheers: they dance, chat and drink for hours, nonetheless having the time of their lives.
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