Virgilio Sieni, the internationally-renowned choreographer and author of one of the most significant experimental experiences in the field of dance, of which he has been a leading figure since the 1980’s, returns to Venice. Sieni will present the world premiere of his new work in Venice and at the Biennale, after Tristi Tropici, inaugurated at last year’s edition of the Dance Festival before being presented at the Biennale de Lyon. Often inspired by great poetry, literature and philosophy – from Lucretius’ De rerum natura to his latest Kore, about the myth of Persephone in a reinterpretation by Giorgio Agamben – this year the Tuscan artist works on the suggestions of Aristotle’s De anima. “Dances are like a collection of notes. They come from the dark, from the depths, close by. They always dance in their attraction to one another. They come in as gusts, they are like groups of families, games between friends, existences left behind then embraced: it all holds up amidst bodies that yield. Gusts that bring forth a collection of pictures: notes, margins, creases on the soul. Every picture, like a short story, seeks to expound on issues along the lines of narration: these dances are made of accelerations, elaborations and suspensions in anticipation. Compassionate figures that remotely recall Picasso’s saltimbanques, jugglers and harlequins. With this departure from the depths, to be presented on stage, the intent is to display a cycle of figures along the edges of rooms immersed in shadow where realism dissipates in a constant descent into the forms of the soul. Rooms for living because they are always waiting for the other. The soul as a form of the living (Aristotle) opens insights into human nature. In this context emerge the figures in the production, apparently melancholic. Deep obscurity, human instability which in this case stimulate a smile and the innate ingenuity of the dancers. Tactility when it acts as a transparent substance is the true origin of every picture, thinking of the light of the gesture that is always generated by the warmth of the rotations. Each dance is also conceived according to several indications borrowed from Aristotle’s De anima about the “sensibles common” to many senses, movement, tranquility, number, figure, size, which surround us in an ample awareness of other bodies; just like the medium for every sense, the channel that binds us organically to the dense flow of the invisible. And finally, who are these pale-faced young people who come up from the depths, articulated with strength and abandon to the gesture of dance, whom we meet along the harsh trails of everyday life? Unintentionally, they show us the tempo enclosed within the particles of movement that shape the fragile figure passing through the transparency of the forest: like lumberjacks, through the thickness of the trees they see the wandering trails that edify the body as it abandons itself to the youthful play of maturity” Virgilio Sieni, the internationally-renowned choreographer and author of one of the most significant experimental experiences in the field of dance, of which he has been a leading figure since the 1980’s, returns to Venice. Sieni will present the world premiere of his new work in Venice and at the Biennale, after Tristi Tropici, inaugurated at last year’s edition of the Dance Festival before being presented at the Biennale de Lyon. Often inspired by great poetry, literature and philosophy – from Lucretius’ De rerum natura to his latest Kore, about the myth of Persephone in a reinterpretation by Giorgio Agamben – this year the Tuscan artist works on the suggestions of Aristotle’s De anima. “Dances are like a collection of notes. They come from the dark, from the depths, close by. They always dance in their attraction to one another. They come in as gusts, they are like groups of families, games between friends, existences left behind then embraced: it all holds up amidst bodies that yield. Gusts that bring forth a collection of pictures: notes, margins, creases on the soul. Every picture, like a short story, seeks to expound on issues along the lines of narration: these dances are made of accelerations, elaborations and suspensions in anticipation. Compassionate figures that remotely recall Picasso’s saltimbanques, jugglers and harlequins. With this departure from the depths, to be presented on stage, the intent is to display a cycle of figures along the edges of rooms immersed in shadow where realism dissipates in a constant descent into the forms of the soul. Rooms for living because they are always waiting for the other. The soul as a form of the living (Aristotele) opens insights into human nature.

In this context emerge the figures in the production, apparently melancholic. Deep obscurity, human instability which in this case stimulate a smile and the innate ingenuity of the dancers. Tactility when it acts as a transparent substance is the true origin of every picture, thinking of the light of the gesture that is always generated by the warmth of the rotations. Each dance is also conceived according to several indications borrowed from Aristotle’s De anima about the “sensibles common” to many senses, movement, tranquility, number, figure, size, which surround us in an ample awareness of other bodies; just like the medium for every sense, the channel that binds us organically to the dense flow of the invisible. And finally, who are these pale-faced young people who come up from the depths, articulated with strength and abandon to the gesture of dance, whom we meet along the harsh trails of everyday life? Unintentionally, they show us the tempo enclosed within the particles of movement that shape the fragile figure passing through the transparency of the forest: like lumberjacks, through the thickness of the trees they see the wandering trails that edify the body as it abandons itself to the youthful play of maturity”. (Virgilio Sieni)