Three "masterpieces" on stage:
One musical: The string quartet in D minor "Death and The Maiden".
One physical: The human being in all its excellence.
One spiritual-philosophical: The mystery of our end and its continual watching over us.
Our thoughts go back to  human existence and that which defines it: life and death. The beginning and the end are the miracles of our existence as is the impermanence of our being, with its constantly mutating (oppure "changing"-mutating peuò essere un po' negativo) forms. This moving from one form to another is found in dance: bearer of such a task and in itself dangling images in front of us which continually appear and disappear. For this reason we have pondered on what could be defined as a "twilight zone" in dance, intentionally caught in the exact moment of impermanence and transience.
An example of written music which aspires to the  infinite and accompanies the listener beyond a rational idea, towards the unkown and transcendent. We have tried to comprehend and open up,like surgeons, the body of this writing in order to study the gaps, the hollow spaces. More than ever this  time, composing has been like an eternal falling, an escape from every end and every sense.

When Michele Abbondanza and Antonella Bertoni created this work in 2017, one could say that they brought before the eyes of the world the visual expression enclosed in the D minor quartet "Death and the Maiden" by Franz Schubert. The two works, in fact, the choreographic and the musical, have merged and intertwined to the point that the musical score without the reading given by the two choreographers today seems incomplete.

Giulia Clai, «Sipario», 6 marzo 2022

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I'm not sure: it could be that I'm in my 50s, maybe with an awareness of all that slips away or nostalgia but this version of La Morte e la Fanciulla for me was an epiphany of pain and misery. The purely infinitive and bitter beauty of the female body becomes, as the performance develops, a macabre depiction of the tomb, a shocking “memento mori” for the inevitability of death.

….A compassionate and moving verse dedicated to what once was and will be no more.

Andrea Porcheddu, « Gli Stati generali » , 1 luglio 2017

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La Morte e la Fanciulla (Death and The Maiden) by Abbondanza Bertoni is beauty and death, a macabre and moving dance; bitter, sweet and  poignant.

The use of video and live dance is perfect, the perspective from the camera which cuts and dismembers the bodies, obsessivley following them closely, in synchronisation with the choreography, the idea of inside and outside, light and shade, real and unreal, music and deafening noise. The skill with which all elements have been put together is emotional.

The choreography and music also work extremely well together and the themes are never lost, nothing is lost which can often be the case when deriving from different art forms.

Abbondanza Bertoni's La Morte e La Fanciulla leaves you with that bitter-sweetness of abandoning yourself to the inevitable, and after the hopeless quest to escape, we can let go in a heart rending embrace.

I wouldn't have expected any less from Abbondanza Bertoni, though they still surprise me, as they do every time, with their delicate and corageous approach which never loses itself in digression but goes straight to the heart of the theme. It enters into the theme and lets it enter you.  .

Margherita Landi, « enricopastore.com » , 7 luglio 2017

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(….)The “Cara” space hosted the most atmospheric and charged  performance of the entire festival;  the debut of La Morte e La Fanciulla ( Death and The Maiden) by Abbondaza and Bertoni(....)

Fast dancing made up of whims in the manner of Goya, snippets of Tarantella, animalesque movements and the entangling of bodies which bring to life an endless and unstable figuration, never completely in focus, in which everyone can see his favourite looming shadows of: Canova's Grazie, or Matisse's The Dance, or Botticelli or Schiele (….)

It is in their decisive return to the dance form, that Abbondanza and Bertoni have managed to re-establish the pathos of distance which, due precisely to its anachronistic nature, converses with the contemporary (by using videos which make up a back stage during pauses in movement, shifting the narration to an “outside” which is actually only an imaginary threshold.) 

Attilio Scarpellini, « Doppiozero » , 7 luglio 2017

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Sulphurous and caressing, this La Morte e La Fanciulla (Death and the Maiden) is decisive, without “ifs” or “buts”. Its enchanting movements, of extreme precision, bring with them beauty and sensuality: all of which the unforgiving Death -here in a video-virtual-verbal form- will claim back as his own. With sheer compassionate horror.

Marinella Guatterini, « Domenica Il Sole 24 ore » , 6 agosto 2017

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La morte e la fanciulla (Death and The Maiden) – Press Reviews.

Once again, Abbondanza and Bertoni are contemporary leaders with their La Morte e La Fanciulla, a visionary work in expressionist style, created and developed in remarkable synthesis with Schubert's score of the same name. A splendid and perfect cast. The whole work is full of emotion, suspended on the seductive invitation from Death to the Maiden....the rest is enchantment.

Rossella Battisti, « Danza&Danza » , September 2017

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The exceptional talent of the three protagonists on stage allows the music to come alive and the body to vanish into the music.

This is choreography in its purest form, where lighting and special effects present us with a rare and unprecedented beauty.

Corona Perer, « Giornale Sentire » , marzo 2018

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Out of the dusky and chaotic atmosphere at the start, pervaded by smoke which blurs your vision, everything gradually becomes clearer until naked bodies appear proscenium, abruptly in close contact with the audience and then, in turn,  unknowingly becoming a farewell.

Giorgia Sossass, « Questotrentino » , aprile 2018

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It is rare that the elegance in contemporary dance cuts through silence and fades into movement. A kind of “rising” between a body that strikes the ground horizontally and a vertical body catching breath as it leaps up. It's the law of a blank space which can turn into a caress, seduction and vitality before the bodies surrender to sombre disappearance. 

Simone Azzoni, « Artribune » , 6 aprile 2018