Dancers: Eleonora Chiocchini, David Labanca
Musical research: Mauro Casappa
Light beams, mechanical objects and performance: François Gendre

I wish there were places that were stable, unmoving, untouched and almost untouchable, unchangeable. Places helping us to find reference points, as well as starting points, a source: the house where I might have been born, the tree that I could have seen grow...Just like thinking of nothing, without automatically adding something around that nothing, without making it just another void to be quickly filled with something: a look, a need, a destiny, a lack of something... We have to live within fragile spaces, drained, destroyed by time; ultimately we are betrayed by our memories, as oblivion seeps in. In our vacuum, we set off on a journey of exploration of our humanity, suspended somewhere between reality and imagination, tracing the boundaries of spaces, micro-worlds penetrated by beams of light, the vibrations of sounds and mechanical objects which confront our bodies, the bearers of gestures.

Eleonora Chiocchini
Eleonora trained as a dancer at Perugia’s Dance Gallery and completed her training through master classes and workshops both in Italy and abroad (Paris, Brussels and Vienna). Since 2005, she has performed for Compagnia Abbondanza Bertoni, Teatrodanza Tiziana Arnaboldi (Switzerland), Dejà Donné, Dergah Danza Teatro, Teatro dell'Archivolto, Compagnia Simona Bucci, Habillé d'eau and Sosta Palmizi. Alongside her work as a performer, she has been developing her own personal research, involving the creation of choreographies including “Attentazione: esercizi all'azione attenta” (2010, Attentation: Exercises for an Attentive Attention) winner of the “Nutrimenti: sostenere l'emergente” Prize (Terni); “A piccole dosi” (2010, In Small Doses) in collaboration with the association Sosta Palmizi; “Frane” (2011, Landslides) awarded the Toscana Factory Dance prize at Fabbricaeuropa (Florence); Fragilefrana (2011) winner of “Created in Umbria” and the “E45 Napoli Fringe Festival”.

David Labanca
David was born in Tuttlingen (Germany) but grew up in Milan, where he attended his first theatre classes and became part of Compagnia TeatrObliquo. In 2007 he decided to move to Switzerland to attend Scuola Teatro Dimitri, where he studied in-depth acrobatics, dance, voice, improvisation, masks and clowning, gaining a bachelor’s degree in Physical Theatre. From 2010 he has been a member of Compagnia Teatro Dimitri, taking part in comedy shows and, at the same time, collaborating with Compagnia Teatro Danza Tiziana Arnaboldi as a dancer. He has also collaborated on a string of independent productions, further developing his personal research and study of movement as a mean of expression in both theatre and dance.

François Gendre
Born in Fribourg, François is a painter, musician, lighting designer, clever bricoleur and performer. He has worked with a long list of theatre and dance companies thanks in no small part to his versatile talent: Guignol à roulette (Fribourg), Atelier des gestes (Fribourg), Drift (Zurich) (since 1994) and Compagnia Tiziana Arnaboldi (Ascona) (since 2004). He has also composed film scores: for Alain Favre’s “New‐York, 2 secondes trop tard” (Fribourg) and Fulvio Tomazzi’s “Bad trip to mars” (Lausanne). He has also co-created (with Olivier Suter) an installation for the 20th anniversary of the Paris Swiss Cultural Centre.

Mauro Casappa
A composer and musical researcher, Mauro studied music and composition at Parma Conservatory and Reggio Emilia’s Musical Institute, attending classes held by Luciano Berio, Sylvano Bussotti, Paolo Cavazzini, Franco Donatoni, Armando Gentilucci, Gerard Grisey, Adriano Guarnieri, Giacomo Manzoni, Emmanuel Nunes, Salvatore Sciarrino and Alvise Vidolin.
He has worked with theatre companies including Elsinor, Il Buratto, Nuova Scena, Teatro dell’Arca and Teatro delle Briciole, with directors Stefano Monti, Letizia Quintavalla and Bruno Stori, the dance companies of Abbondanza-Bertoni, Artemis Danza (Monica Casadei) and Teatrodanza Tiziana Arnaboldi (Switzerland) and choreographers Nicoletta Cabassi, Chiara Frigo, Daniele Ninarello, Thierry Parmentier and Piera Principe. He has also collaborated with sculptors Oscar Accorsi and Robert Morris and with director Peter Greenaway.

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A morning stroll in the footsteps of Charlotte Bara, accompanied by young dancers from Paris and Tiziana Arnaboldi’s Compagnia giovani, among the lively colours of the walls and apartments of Teatro San Materno, evoking her rich and profound universe of thoughts on life, death and the sacred status of dance.

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Two young dancers, after having firmly established themselves on the international stage thanks to their original work in the field of entertainment (begun under the auspices of the European ‘Act Your Age’ project), find further chance for development with West End. Any exploration of the relationship between the West and its decline necessitates a choice of perspective: this piece elects to exclude the dramatic by focusing on the cadence of tap. Through its rhythm and lightness, this performance aims to celebrate the ashes as well as the re-birth, tracing a trajectory through quotations which face the inevitable questions of why we feel ourselves to be westerners and ultimately, dealing with the sense of defeat that’s in the air.

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Mario Botta
His work took as its starting point Le Corbusier, Louis I. Kahn and Carlo Scarpa, who he met in Venice when studying at the University School of Architecture.
Beginning with his detached residences in Canton Ticino, his subsequent designs have gone on to include all types of structures right around the globe, from schools, banks, libraries, and museums to religious and administrative buildings.
Starting in 1996, Botta has played an active role as been active as one of the creators and founders of Mendrisio’s Academy of Architecture, with the aim of passing on his knowledge of a subject which, above all, remains his passion. He lives and works in Mendrisio.

Chiara Gatti
Historian, Art critic and journalist at Repubblica

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This workshop focuses on the awareness that our bodies possess a physical mass. We will explore using this mass to move through space and to feel the body in its entirety.

The basic theme of the workshop is to play with our own bodies (and their mass) as if they were falling meteors: We will learn to fall, absorbing our weight on the floor without getting hurt and then, with specific exercises, develop our readiness to act and re-act when faced with a body advancing toward us.

Playing with various physical actions in relation to one or more partners, we will develop the ability to move instinctively and to react with clarity and precision to our partners’ impulses.

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Two artists who have followed diverse paths but shared their passion for Persian music for many years. Together, they have undertaken a good number of creative works, each juxtaposing Persian music with other musical universes in a unique way. At the core, is a respect for both tradition and openness, the true driving force of their musical creativity, creating moments of pure poetry, meditation and intensity. With a succession of pulsating pieces, as well as extracts from their non-rhythmic repertoire, the concert offers a taste of the richness of Iran’s musical scales and the expressive possibilities permitted by the interplay of santur, voice and Persian percussion. Combining virtuosity with depth, meditation and sensitivity, voice, skin, strings and sticks intertwine in a highly original, auditory universe.

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Faustino Blanchut: actor-dancer
Pierre Blanchut: musician

A co-production with Teatro San Materno

‘La mauvaise herbe’ is a transposition of the book Alamut by Vladimir Bartol. This novel, sadly all too topical today, tells the story of Hassan Ibn Al Sabbah, leader of a sect of assassins, who lived in Iran between 1036 and 1124.

“...We want to make them living daggers, able to subjugate time and space in a single gesture. We want them to sow fear and anxiety everywhere. A deadly fear shall hit the powerful who side against us...” (Alamut)

Onto the stage, father and son conjure music, words and dance, tackling, with biting humour, the themes of transmission, alienation, resistance and liberation.

Research collaboration through to a residence at Teatro San Materno

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Choreography and Direction Tiziana Arnaboldi
Performers Eleonora Chiocchini, Marta Ciappina, Valentina Moar
Music Mauro Casappa
Video Oscar Accorsi

“Every movement should transmit its vibrations up to the sky, becoming part of the eternal rhythm.” This thought neatly summarizes what Charlotte Bara attempted to convey through her sacred dance. Three wonderful dancers, with a sensitive, curious and flexible approach, tracing fragments of unique and exceptionally beautiful postures on to the Teatro San Materno stage, combining hands, arms, and glances veiled in mystery, so dear to sacred dancer Charlotte Bara. Raden Mas Jodjani, an Indonesian prince, had taught her that the hand, the instrument of instruments, as Aristotle noted, was capable of transposing the subtlest shades of the mind, a true link between the physical and the spiritual spheres. Music and video, especially created for this occasion, envelop the audience in evocative images.

Museo Castello San Materno Lectures, 7.30pm

Tiziana Arnaboldi’s intent is to create a virtual bridge between the Museo Castello San Materno and Teatro San Materno. Two historic locations, united as homes and property of the Bachrach family.

This commemorative event begins with a historical presentation of the figure of Charlotte Bara by Michela Poncini, curator of the sacred dancer’s archive; following, this is followed by readings from Isadora Duncan and from family friend, Rainer Maria Rilke. These texts offer a glimpse into Charlotte Bara’s source of inspiration.

Research collaboration through a residence at Teatro San Materno

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Choreographer and dancer Simona Bucci, former soloist dancer with Alwin Nikolais, continues with her wonderful efforts in spreading the exceptional educational legacy of Master Nikolais.

Simona Bucci, during her workshop, focuses on awareness of the possibilities of the single person and on the capacity of the body to transform into something else, thanks to art’s metaphorical connotation. 

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Demonstrative lecture on Alwin Nikolais. This project was born out of a deep feeling of gratitude and admiration towards one of the Twentieth Century’s great masters of dance, Alwin Nikolais. An innovator of the very concept of dance itself, Nikolais saw the analysis of movement as the basis for his research, and attempted to develop an aware, unique and original artistic process, that was neither coded or pre-defined within schemes and styles. His definition of dance still offers a precious tool, which is able to provide dancers with an awareness of gesture in relation to universal laws, in terms of both functional and creative connotation.

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Two performances originated and developed at Teatro San Materno
Choreography and Direction by Tiziana Arnaboldi, Teatro San Materno Ascona
Dancers Pierre-Yves Diacon, Valentina Moar, Claudia Rossi Valli
Sounds Mauro Casappa
Production Teatro San Materno Chiasso

Chiasso’s Spazio Officina is transformed into a river bed, with stones recreating the environment of Breggia. This idyllic, meditative atmosphere, a bearer of beauty, is the backdrop to "Il suono delle pietre" and “Motivo di una danza", and the place where they originate. A dance formed of sensitive, light steps, where feet, hands and other elements of the body seek the caress and intimacy with the roughness of stones; a celebration, on the part of man, of the earth, of gravity, of weight and space. A solemn game, a rite; perhaps, able to fulfil the motive, or the motif, of a dance.

Two performances created and developed at Teatro San Materno, which have had great success with the public and which, today, find a new dimension and new artistic epiphany.

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Light, not only within our own tradition, has become established as a powerful metaphor for the truth: the enlightened truth is both knowledge of the world and of ourselves, and is released from concealing darkness, intended as ignorance, deceit, subjugation, evil. Light is also therefore a metaphor of the journey, the hard and rugged path which, from ignorance, takes one towards knowledge, once the veils obstructing our vision are torn away. However, as Pascal said, light and darkness are a function of one another, especially when faith in God is brought into play, and each exit from the cave presumes, as the famous myth teaches us, a return to the cave. Darkness is never dissolved once and for all.

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Pianoforte: J.S.Bach/G.Kurtag, Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit BWV 106
G.Kurtag, Jatekok - Hommage à J.S.Bach (4 hands)
M.Ravel, from the Tombeau de Couperin: Forlane, Rigaudon, Menuet (Gesa Lücker)
G.Ligeti, Sonatina
M.Ravel, Suite Ma Mère l'Oye
A.Schönberg, 6 pieces for piano 4 hands, 1896 (4 hands)
M.Ravel, La Valse (Gabriele Leporatti)

Gabriele Leporatti
A talented young pianist and maestro of Romantic music, with an impressive history of performances both in Italy and abroad. Gabriele made his debut in the USA in 2009 with a solo recital at the prestigious New York International Keyboard Institute & Festival. Since 2011 he has been teaching for the International Keyboard Institute and Festival at New York’s Mannes College of Music, and from 2012, also teaching Piano at Düsseldorf’s Anton Rubinstein Academy, where he is Head of the Piano Department. His discography includes a solo CD entirely dedicated to J. Brahms’ early works, as well as a CD for True Sounds, played ‘four hands’ with Fabio Bidini.

Gesa Lücker
"A thoughtful pianist from Germany ... straightforward and sensitive ... rich in imagination and technical prowess ..." (The New York Times)

Gesa’s extensive concert activity has meant regular performances in Germany, the USA, China and Europe, and prestigious venues including Hannover’s NDR, New York’s Yamaha and Carnegie Halls, London’s Wigmore and Shanghai’s He Luting Hall.  She has held recitals, masterclasses and conferences in China, in Shanghai (Oriental Arts Center), Suzhou (Culture and Arts Center), Nanjing (Nanjing Arts Center) and Beijing (Tsinghua University, China Conservatory of Music) and in New York, at the prestigious International Keyboard Institute and Festival.

As a chamber performer, she can boast collaborations with soloists from many major orchestras, such as Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and the Düsseldorfer Symphoniker, and artists including Tanja Becker-Bender, Christoph Eß, Sayaka Schmuck and Katharina Deserno. In addition, she regularly plays duets with her husband, the Italian Pianist Gabriele Leporatti.

Eleonora Chiocchini
Eleonora trained as a dancer at Perugia’s Dance Gallery and completed her training through master classes and workshops both in Italy and abroad (Paris, Brussels and Vienna). Since 2005 she has performed for Compagnia Abbondanza Bertoni, Teatrodanza Tiziana Arnaboldi (Switzerland), Dejà Donné, Dergah Danza Teatro, Teatro dell'Archivolto, Compagnia Simona Bucci, Habillé d'eau and Sosta Palmizi. Alongside her work as a performer, she has been developing her own personal research, involving the creation of choreographies including “Attentazione: esercizi all'azione attenta” (2010, Attentation: Exercises for an Attentive Attention) winner of the “Nutrimenti: sostenere l'emergente” Prize (Terni); “A piccole dosi” (2010, In Small Doses) in collaboration with the association Sosta Palmizi; “Frane” (2011, Landslides) awarded the Toscana Factory Dance prize at Fabbricaeuropa (Florence) and Fragilefrana (2011) winner of “Created in Umbria” and of the “E45 Napoli Fringe Festival”.

Pierre-Yves Diacon (1991) is a break-dancer. In 2007 he graduated from Amsterdam’s School for New Dance Development, specialising in choreography. Between 2005 and 2016 he presented numerous shows at a variety of international festivals, including Amsterdam, La Have, Barcelona, Beirut and Maspalomas. He is currently attending the “Transforme” training course at the French Royaumont Foundation and working with Tiziana Arnaboldi’s Compagnia Teatrodanza.

Residential Research Collaboration at Teatro San Materno

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Nguyen Lê, Electric guitar
Ngô Hồng Quang Đàn Nhị, Đan Bao, other traditional instruments

This concert of the renowned French guitarist Nguyen Lê alongside talented young multi-instrumentalist Ngô Hồng Quang promises an intimate dialogue between two generations of musicians. It also offers the fruits of an encounter between Jazz and the ethnic music of the inhabitants of Vietnam’s plateau region: a unique musical experience. Discover an unusual but fascinating musical universe. Vietnam’s traditional music is almost unknown to us and, to a Westener’s ear, may sound exotic and mysterious. Today, Vietnam is characterised by both a truly great respect for tradition, and a significant cultural awakening. It is perhaps no surprise then that Vietnamese musicians seem to have an unparalleled talent for combining modernity and the cultural heritage of the music from the Far East.

When French Jazz guitarist Nguyen first visited Vietnam, his parents’ country of origin, at the age of eighteen, he was confronted with an entirely original musical world. Since then, he has devoted himself to the musical universe of Southeast Asia, while at the same time developing an unequalled style. During the 1990’s he established himself as one of the mainstays of European Jazz, and more recently has amazed the music world with a successful fusion of European Jazz and classical Vietnamese music together with Hanoi singer Huong Thanh.

Ngo Hồng Quang is a charismatic and exceptionally talented musician; despite his young age, he is in great demand both in the East and West. He was born in Hanoi and studied music at the city Conservatory. Over the years he has managed to master an extraordinary mix of ethnic instruments played by the populations of the coast and plateau of Vietnam. He is currently studying contemporary composition in Leiden (Netherlands).

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Carolyn Carlson, a great dancer and choreographer who has taken a unique artistic journey, is back at Teatro San Materno, the temple of dance, this time drawing extraordinary choreographic calligraphy.

In this event, Carolyn Carlson further showcases her talents which lay between thought and spirituality. The calligraphy allows the mute gesture to speak out: the two come together, in Carlson’s work, the calligraphy becoming an image for the expression of the mute gesture, and the basis for further gestures to come, developing within a choreographic whole.

Carolyn Carlson’s dance, defined by the artist as ‘visual poetry’, has always been closely linked to the plastic arts, in terms of both its inspiration and its use of space (gestures, colours, and lighting). Carlson’s response to the ephemeral nature of the gesture has been a long-standing desire to fix movements on paper: is this the solution for retaining the transience of the gesture? The choreographer uses the word ‘traces’, and today her poetic universe expresses itself in a variety of forms: dance, writing and ink. For several years now, Carlson has been developing a particular type of performance which weaves together these strands into an experience: the Poetry Event. This is a mixture of improvisation, dance, poetry readings, and an exhibition of calligraphy and music, creating snap-shots directly linked to the myth of the Blue Lady. For the event at Ascona’s Teatro San Materno, Carlson will be joined by Sara Simeoni, the hugely charismatic dancer and, since 2005, faithful interpreter of her plays, to produce a genuinely unique spectacle, a privileged moment of infinitely free poetical expression.

Carlson’s poems and calligraphy have spawned numerous publications in addition to “Writings on Water”, an exhibition of writings and drawings hosted by Roubaix’s Musée d’Art et d’Industrie La Piscine from June to September 2016.

I keep writing on endless pages
Maybe somewhere heard digested
Maybe nowhere at all
Tear scratch complete
What all poets assemble
Words and words and longer perceptions
To what concern are you to I
For what concern do I rearrange the alphabet
Be it the need to share a gift

Centuries among us
Poets whose gift is more than I
We all scribble a poem sometimes
Consequently of love
So do not listen
I have not written anything
You have not before heard
Only a different context
This moment now
So I come with myself perceived
Pronounced – to what consequence

Carolyn Carlson
Je ne cesse d’écrire sur l’infini de mes pages
Peut-être dans un espace déjà connu
Peut-être nulle part
Déchirer, rayer, aboutir
Toute l’œuvre des poètes
Des mots et des mots et des visions en amont, en aval
Quelle part de toi m’habite
Pourquoi je m’acharne à refaire l’alphabet
Ce désir de partage nous anime

Depuis des siècles avant et après nous
Des poètes plus doués que moi

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An exchange with Pietro Leemann, chef of quality natural cuisine, featuring Tiziana Arnaboldi’s dancers.
This time at Teatro San Materno, dance offers an invitation for dialogue between the arts, and specifically the culinary art of natural haute cuisine chef Pietro Leeman. It’s a chance to transport the audience to a species of café-theatre and embark upon a philosophical journey into culinary research.
For Pietro Leemann, “food must meet the cultures of the world, where nature is welcomed and respected in food preparation which never compromises its essence, colours, taste and consistency or the art of displaying it on a plate.”
The dancers accompany Leeman’s culinary art with a rich gestural palette, with the key ingredients of rhythm, energy, sensitivity, strength and vulnerability, creating action where time obeys its own rules.
Teatro San Materno is set to be enlivened by a new experience of dialogue between the arts: culinary art seasoned with gestural art. Together, they become bearers of beauty and authenticity, respecting our own, unique human nature.

A reflection by Pietro Leeman
I think that cooking can be a form of art. As an art, its main objective is to delight the people it is aimed at. In addition, it should bear a message, and in my case that means an offer of vegetarian cuisine,  which is being adopted by ever more people, whether partially or totally, and for a wide range of reasons, including hygiene, the environment, animal rights, or connections with the great Oriental and spiritual philosophies.
Food, and how we eat it, tells, both ourselves and others, who we are, with no false pretence. According to Feuerbach, changing our diet may change our essence. It’s obvious from that that it’s in our interests to choose nourishment which is consistent with our thoughts.
Another feature of the art of cooking is its role as a medium in our relations with other people: our life is articulated around important moments where both food and feelings are shared. It is simply obligatory to think of the right food for any such occasion, from the baby food for our children to the candle-lit dinner, to the Host consecrated during the Mass.
The language of food is extraordinarily varied, determined by culture, social status, habits, trends and other factors. It can have various degrees of sophistication, and in its expressive form it may establish an exchange with other forms of expression, with similar aims and creative processes. That’s how over the years I have entertained enriching exchanges with writers, sculptors, clowns, musicians, composers and artists in general. So far that has never included dancers or choreographers: when Tiziana Arnaboldi called me, with a quickening of my heart I found myself ready to start a new journey. Together with Tiziana, I thought of starting from the five elements: ether, air, fire, water, earth, as forming the main thread, to establish a dialogue and to move closer.
In the Veda culture, creation starts from ether, which, with its movement, becomes air, its friction generating fire, the three together then becoming vapour and finally water. From their combination, earth and therefore food appear.
5 elements and 5 tastings and 5 representations which embody them within that order. It’s based on my cooking style, with friendship towards nature, towards any form of being and anything that eats.
On stage, the chefs and the dancers, performing their roles: the former, preparing their tastings, handling their instruments, the latter through the expression of their body and movements.
The rhythm is given by the true sounds of the restaurant, sometimes pacey, sometimes calm, always searching for balance and harmony. Enjoy!

Residential Research Collaboration at Teatro San Materno

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Concept, choreography Lorena Dozio
Musical composition, Sévérine Rième
Performers, Aniol Busquets, Sévérine Bauvais, Lorena Dozio, Edouard Pelleray
Dramaturgy advisor, Stefano Tomassini
Production and administration, Sergio Chianca/ Bürokultur and Clémence Sormani
A thank you to Kerem Gelebek

IT_Otholites (a birds’ code) takes inspiration from the language of birds and the whistled languages spoken in various parts of the world. By investigating the relationship between air, sound and others through the whistle, bodies become musical instruments and transmitters of code. The pressure of air as a support through space induces lift and the elevation, defying gravity. How do we orient ourselves in the world? Through which trajectories, encounters and on what levels of reality? The four body-sensors generate ephemeral constellations on various levels, guided by the otoliths, crystals in the inner ear which contribute to balance and orientation in space.

Biography
Lorena Dozio is a Swiss-Italian dancer and choreographer. She studied at Bologna University (DAMS) and trained in dance and choreography at Angers’ National Centre of Contemporary Dance (CNDC) under the direction of Emmanuelle Huynh. Since 2006 she has been developing her choreographic work; she has collaborated with Fernando Cabral and worked with other choreographers including Maria Donata D’Urso (assistant), Laure Bonicel, Catherine Bay, Eric Didry and more recently with Emmanuelle Raynaut (dance). In 2013 she attended the ‘Transforme’ training session at the Abbaye de Royaumont with Myriam Gourfink, where she created the solo ‘Levante’ and began her collaboration with composers Carlo Ciceri and Daniel Zea. Together, they created Associazione Crile, based in Lugano. In 2014 for the Venice Biennale Danza/Prima.Danza, she created the solo ‘Alibi’, followed in 2015 by the male trio ‘Les nautes’. Lorena Dozio’s work evolves around the principle of a sensitive writing: exploring the unique and the multiple, and the blow as the driving force of movement which, when visualised, leads to transgressive spaces in the continuum between the visible and invisible. Lorena Dozio is an artist associate of Lugano’s LAC/LuganoInScena, part of the YAA! (Young Artist Associated) project promoted by Pro Helvetia.

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Scene and Direction, Lia Chiappara
Scene created by Rosaria Randazzo
Singing, Stefania Sperandeo
Video, Domenico Bravo
Costumes, Sartoria Teatro Libero
Lighting, Fiorenza Dado and Gabriele Circo

‘Una pietra sopra’ is sort of a Palermo-based Spoon River. A series of voices and characters succeed on stage to compose, in front of the audience, the disturbing display of a city’s guilt- ridden disintegration. Facing this inexorable decadence, the deceased telling their stories in front of the undertaker becomes a material act of rebellion, but at the same time, subverts daily reality and evokes the metaphysical. It’s an ambiguous plot, where the supernatural appears linked to the mundane, the metaphysical to the flow of everyone’s ordinary existence, and where evidently surreal characters appear as authentic, as the comedian constantly draws from tragedy and the artificial language of theatre feeds on the earthly dirt of dialect. This is a polylogue, a concert where the ultimate lasting embrace is the one between sound and sense.

The show will be followed by a brief conversation with Beno Mazzone, artistic director of Palermo’s Teatro Libero.

The Teatro Libero company can now boast more than forty years of creative work. Its concept of theatre is that of an open and available space. Within this, there is a strong sense of continuity, in both theoretical and practical terms, and particularly in its workshops of research and experimentation, the identification and presentation of new dramaturgies, theatre/dance, new dance, the elaboration and production of its own creations, and the promotion and diffusion of theatre in schools of every kind.

For Teatro Libero the creative phase is inseparable from complementary activities such as the organisation of congresses, workshops, exhibitions, and research targeting areas within the city (neighbourhoods, schools, libraries, streets, squares, and decentralised areas), the territories of Palermo’s inland region and indeed, Sicily itself.

Beno Mazzone and Lia Chiappara’s poetics have two main orientations: as permanent directors of the theatre, they have explored, and continue to explore, on the one hand, the reinterpretation of classic tragedians (Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Gogol) and other literary greats such as  Dostoyevsky, D’arrigo and others, while on the other hand, the popularisation of Italian, European and international contemporary dramaturgy from authors little-known or unpublished in Italy, such as Handke, Vian, Kroetz, Mamet, Genet, Grumberg, Minyana, Mrozek, Havel, Schisgal, Gems, Mitropulu, Beckett, Lima, Laberge Cunillé, Botho Strauss, Ionesco, Pommerat, Visniec, Loher, Marinelli and others.

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Beat Weyeneth and his special ‘lithophones’, tuned, stone discs, home-made from serpentinite and arranged as a keyboard, remind us that making music means shaping the elements to create a sound which didn’t exist before, and that, by using instruments hewn from the natural world, people can elevate their existence toward new levels of consciousness and knowledge.

The children become immersed in tactile sensation, and sensitive, light touches, while hands, feet and bodies search for both the roughness and smoothness of the stones. A game is constructed to re-discover the value of fragility, whilst searching for points of stability.

This is mankind celebrating earth, gravity, weight and space.

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