Nicknamed Spadò, Alberto Spadolini was an internationally renowned dancer, painter and choreographer, who lived for most of his life and career in Paris in the twenties and thirties, was born in Ancona and was of humble origins.
He made his debut at a very young age in Rome, at Anton Giulio Bragaglia's Teatro degli Indipendenti, but it was in Nice and then in Paris that his consecration took place with none other than Josephine Baker, with whom he also had an affair.
“What does it matter who I am… I dance” is how Spadò replies to the journalist who, following his success, tells her Joie de Paris asked him the question: who is he? Where is he from? His dances are based on primitivism or anarchic primitivism, an artistic current close to nature, to a spontaneity opposed to the image of futurism, to the machine, to the mechanics typical of those times. His dances reminiscent of many images from Fritz Lang's films, Metropolis, are a clear message of denunciation and suffering of human beings in the face of this new system that is increasingly taking hold. He meets D'Annunzio at the Vittoriale, who reminds him that his poses sometimes remind him of San Sebastiano.
He is in fact a figurative, symbolic dancer. From jump. His famous jumps have a kinetic awareness, as well as a great exhortative force: the jump, the elevation represents something that has to do with detaching oneself from the ground, from matter, reaching more spiritual goals. He is a highly expressive dancer: the arched back, the legs bent at different angles, gaze upwards, towards unattainable goals, all demonstrates the incredible communicative strength of this dancer who comes from a modest city in the Marche: Ancona, which perhaps has nothing to do with dance and therefore amazes us more.
In the second part of his life Spadò dedicated himself to painting, and here too with some success.
His paintings leave their mark. The beauty is that before being a dancer he was born a painter. They are often dance paintings, classical dance choreographies, faceless dancers, with a great expressive texture. At the bottom of him presses the body and the energy that it releases: "I live as I breathe and I dance: instinctively".
