Xenos. Performance Festival - November 14 Program

Marta Ciappina & Giacomo Luci
Being in the Gaze
site-specific performance by and with Marta Ciappina & Giacomo Luci based on the photographs by Olivo Barbieri 

Cappella del Manto – IV floor
from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Duration 2 hours

They look and are looked at, they feel and are felt
The eyes of the two performers—who create mirrored movements from inside to outside, from outside to inside, in the light and in the darkness, in the visible and the invisible—spark a shared gaze in a dual interpretive level between Olivo Barbieri’s photographic work and surrounding reality, between representation and lived experience. The performance works as a sensitive device activated by the entrance of each visitor to the Cappella del Manto, involving them in the movement experience.

Marta Ciappina, dancer and teacher, trained in New York at the Trisha Brown Studio. As a dancer she has worked alongside Alessandro Sciarroni, Michele Di Stefano, Tiziana Arnaboldi, Marco D’Agostin, Anagoor, Simona Bertozzi, Chiara Bersani, Daniele Albanese, and Daniele Ninarello. As a teacher, she collaborates with the Luca Ronconi School at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, directed by Claudio Longhi. In 2022 she received the Danza&Danza Award as performer and in 2023 the Ubu Award as performer. 

Giacomo Luci dancer, performer and choreographer. He began as a soloist at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in the classical repertoire, continuing at the Opéra de Lyon, engaging with the contemporary dance of Forsythe, Bausch, Cunningham, Childs, and Brown. Since 2018, he has developed his own choreographic research presented at international festivals, and in 2025 he will work with Millepied, Chamblas, Tanowitz and the bullyache collective.

Olivo Barbieri is among the most important contemporary Italian photographers. Active since 1978, starting from 1989 he has regularly traveled to the East, with a particular focus on China. In the 1990s, he took part in several editions of the Venice Biennale and numerous international events. In 1996, the Museum Folkwang in Essen dedicated a retrospective to him. Famous for his Site Specific projects, he has transformed urban landscapes into unprecedented visions exhibited in the world’s major museums.

Free entry, continuous flow

Alessandra Cristiani & Jacopo Giarda
In the Gaze of Teodora Axente 
active performance by and with Alessandra Cristiani & Jacopo Giarda 
based on the works of Teodora Axente

Exhibition halls - VI floor
from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm
first performance 6:00 pm, repeats at 6:30 pm, 7:00 pm, 7:30 pm, and 8:00 pm
Duration 10 min

The gaze that looks back
Everything rests on improvisation born from the gaze with which the performers engage in observing the works of the Spanish-born, Belgian-naturalized artist. Together, they explore the possibilities of free improvisation as a site of interaction between the body that observes and acts, and that is observed and acted upon, for a total synesthesia between human being and artwork.

Costumes Sara Butera

Alessandra Cristiani since 1996 investigates Butō, founding the company Lios and the festival Trasform’azioni. Graduated in Methodology and Critique of Performance, she has worked with Akira Kasai, Roberto Latini, Daria Deflorian, and Silvia Rampelli. With the company Habillè d’eau she won the Ubu Award 2018 for Euforia. Best Actress critic for Un appartamento vuoto, directed by Sara Masi and Francesco M. Mortati, Stockholm City Film Festival 2024.

Jacopo Giarda  dancer and performer, graduated from the Ballet School of Teatro alla Scala. Dancer at the Compañia Nacional de Danza in Madrid, then at the Opera National de Paris and with the Ballet Company of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. He has performed soloist roles by choreographers such as Forsythe, Kylián, Naharin, Ek, Balanchine, Inger, Bausch, León/Lightfoot, McGregor. Today, also freelance, he collaborates with independent organizations and choreographers such as Nicosia, Bolognino, Riva-Repele, Kratz, Ferrara.

Free entry while seats last

LU.PA
HYPERCONNECTED
performance by LU.PA  
project curated by qwatz - contemporary art platform

Sala Italo Calvino – VII floor
at 6:15 pm and repeated at 7:15 pm
Variable duration

Efficiency, presence and control: the body under pressure
LU.PA stages the constant tension of being hyper-connected in contemporary society, where the boundary between private life and work performance is ever thinner and more fragile. On a 90x90 cm pedestal, two performers share the task of balancing an exercise ball between their foreheads while simultaneously managing incoming phone calls, messages, and emails from three different smartphones in real time. Supporting them are Siri and Google Assistant. The fourth protagonist is the audience: through a phone whose number is made public, anyone can intervene, modify, disrupt. LU.PA makes visible and tangible the state of constant alert in which we live, where every interaction is an interruption and every gesture demands precision, concentration, and control. A physical and conceptual investigation into the difficulty of remaining present while everything, inside and out, continues to move.

LU.PA was born in Cosenza in 2017 from the union of Lulù Nuti and Pamela Pintus. The duo explores the relationship with the "other" and the dynamics of the contemporary world through performative and ritual actions that involve the audience. Their work has been presented at institutions such as Musée Zadkine, GAM Roma, and Palazzo Farnese, in independent spaces and international festivals. In 2022, they were MAP_PA Master’s scholars, while in 2023 they produced a commemorative box set with Giordano Boetti Editions. They currently live and work in Rome.

Free entry while seats last

Noé Soulier
PASSAGES
site-specific performance by Noé Soulier 
with Adriano Coletta, Julie Charbonnier, Mélisande Tonolo, Stephanie Amurao

From the entrance of the museum to Sala San Pio – IV floor
at 6:30 pm and repeated at 8:00 pm
Duration 30 min.

Space and body in dialogue, between visible and imaginary architectures
Passages is an itinerant performance project exploring the relationship between the movement of bodies and the spaces they inhabit. The performers interact with imaginary objects, evoking new resonances and meanings in the places they inhabit, temporarily and poetically. The choreography consists of flexible modules, designed to adapt and transform according to the architectural identity of the context: once upheld by columns, a corridor in perspective, a wide grassy expanse. Each space thus becomes an active part of the composition, redefining each time the structure and experience of the performance. Passages invites the audience to observe and listen to the long corridor on the fourth floor of Santa Maria della Scala, from the entrance to Sala San Pio, through the moving body—for a passage between reality and the imaginary.

Noé Soulier, Director of CNDC in Angers, in his work explores choreography and dance in various contexts, from theaters to museums, combining conceptual practice, theoretical reflection, and movement. Among his main works: Faits et Gestes, The Waves, First Memory, Clocks & Clouds, Fragments and Close Up, which stimulate the spectator’s physical memory. He has collaborated with Ballet du Rhin, Ballet de Lorraine, L.A. Dance Project, Ballet de l’Opéra de Lyon, and Nederlands Dans Theater. Since 2020, he has been director of the Centre national de danse contemporaine d’Angers.

Free entry while seats last

Virgilio Sieni
On Lightness/ Variations
site-specific performance by Virgilio Sieni 
with Jari Boldrini, Maurizio Giunti, Andrea Palumbo

Pellegrinaio - IV floor
at 8:30 pm
Duration 30 min.

Lightness, unpredictability, poetic weaves
On Lightness/Variations is a piece for three dancers that interlaces Calvino’s idea of lightness with the emotion of the last days of the writer Italo Calvino, whose coffin was laid out in the Pellegrinaio of the former Santa Maria della Scala hospital. The choreography moves between the Sienese hilltop colors and the call of the sea, generating a dancing word illuminated by the decorative apparatus and spiritual memory of the place. The bodies, oneiric entities akin to Cavalcanti’s little spirits, appear and dissolve, making the void vibrate as sonic matter. The gesture becomes dialect, echo, a crossing between visible and invisible. Inspired by Calvino and Lucretius, the dance welcomes the unpredictable and the infinitesimal, weaving fleeting and corporeal poetic webs. Finally, it reinterprets weight as an act of listening and care, transforming the space into a place of welcome where lightness means rigor, not abandonment.

Choreography Virgilio Sieni; music by Roberto Cecchetto; costumes by Marysol Maria Gabriel.

Produced by the Centro Nazionale di Produzione della Danza Virgilio Sieni / National Center of significant interest in collaboration with AMAT & Civitanova Danza, Visavì Dance Festival / Artisti Associati Gorizia, with the support of MIC, Tuscany Region, Municipality of Florence, Fondazione CR Firenze

Virgilio Sieni is a dancer and choreographer active internationally for major theater institutions, art foundations, and museums. Director of the Venice Biennale-Dance from 2013 to 2016, he currently directs the National Dance Production Centre in Florence. In 2013 he was named Chevalier de l’ordres des arts et des lettres by the French Minister of Culture.

Admission with ticket and reservation
Ticket: €5.00 + museum entry
Concessions: €5.00 for residents of the Municipality of Siena and students from Siena universities

The Gaze in Virtual Reality
Sala Italo Calvino – VII floor
from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm

The second edition of XENOS cannot but continue to investigate that immersive dimension generated in the encounter between real and virtual life, between concrete and post-organic gazes. The Gaze in Virtual Reality offers an immersion in the world of virtual reality with the experiences WAVE by Bart Hess, with choreography and performance by Sedrig Dimitri Verwoert; and HALF LIFE VR by Robert Connor from the choreographic work by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar with the dancers of the Royal Swedish Ballet. You can dive into these two worlds by wearing a headset and sitting comfortably in the dedicated space—none other than the Sala Italo Calvino—named after the writer who, ahead of his time, explored the complexity of the network, interconnected systems and multi-level perceptions of reality.

Free entry with 20 headsets, continuous access

Bart Hess & Sedrig Dimitri Verwoert
WAVE
digital performance by Bart Hess in collaboration with Sedrig Dimitri Verwoert
with Sedrig Dimitri Verwoert & Arad Inbar

Duration 3 min.

A solitary dance that multiplies, in a dream inspired by La Bayadère
Designer Bart Hess, in collaboration with Sedrig Verwoert, presents WAVE, a psychedelic and immersive dance film in which a dancer’s body is manipulated over time through the use of repetitions, delays, and repositioning of frames. This creates a choreography in which the history of a movement generates a new kind of organism. It is a group choreography performed solo, inspired by a scene from the ballet La Bayadère (1877) by choreographer Marius Petipa, in which a prince, after taking too much opium, sees a princess one hundred times. 

director Bart Hess; choreographer Sedrig Verwoert; performers Sedrig Verwoert & Arad Inbar; music: Thys de Vlieger; created with the support of Nederlands Filmfonds & Stimuleringsfonds

Bart Hess fuses design, fashion, and art, exploring materials, technology, and virtual reality. His work, tactile and intuitive, investigates the human body wrapped in forms that recall performance art and science fiction more than fashion. He produces material studies, videos, animations, and photographs, probing the tension between attraction and repulsion in the relationship between skin, materials, and technology.

Sedrig Dimitri Verwoert, artist and choreographer, studied Contemporary Jazz at the Amsterdam University of the Arts. Since 2021, he is Young Creative Associate of the Dutch National Ballet. He has collaborated with Nick Verstand on Within Without II and subsequently at the exhibition Spirituele Urgentie. His latest creation, The Ritual, debuted in 2023.

Robert Connor
HALF LIFE VR
digital performance by Robert Connor
from the choreographic work by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar 
with the dancers of the Royal Swedish Ballet

Duration 11 min. 32 sec.

Precise, intense, and sharp in its gaze
Half Life VR is a virtual reality short film directed by Robert Connor that captures the immersive spirit of the dance work Half Life by choreographer Sharon Eyal, performed by the Royal Swedish Ballet. The short is a co-production between the Royal Swedish Opera and Robert & Robert Studios. The VR production is inspired by 3D dance films like Pina, aiming to present a unique artistic and immersive experience, a sharp projection of the language, movements, and formulas of the soul. 

director Robert Connor; choreographers Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar; performers Sarah-Jane Brodbeck, Joakim Adeberg, Frida Hambraeus, Devon Carbone, Daria Ivanova, Dawid Kupinski, Sarah-Jane Medley, Nacho Lopez, Emily Slawski, Ross Martinson, Lea Ved, Johnny McMillan, Amanda Åkesson, Dragos Mihalcea, Anton Valdbauer; music Ori Lichtik; director of photography Robert Jonsson; producers Sebastian Lönberg, Robert Connor, Robert Jonsson; executive producers Catarina Falkenhav, Peter Yngen; VR 360 editing & post-production Robert Jonsson, Robert Connor; VR sound editing and mixing Sebastian Lönberg

Robert Connor is a Swedish-American director. During his time at Stockholm Film School, he was determined to learn the language of cinematic storytelling and convert it into one for virtual reality. Robert is establishing himself worldwide as a pioneer of stunning VR cinematic experiences.

Sharon Eyal, co-founder, co-artistic director, and choreographer of L-E-V. She danced with Batsheva Dance Company (1990–2008) and began choreography in the Batsheva Dancers Create project. She has created works for international companies and in 2013 founded L-E-V with Gai Behar. In recent years, the company has performed more than 200 shows at international festivals and theaters such as Joyce Theatre, Sadler’s Wells, and Montpellier Danse Festival.

The Half Life VR experience by Robert Connor is distributed by PRO|D|ES Caravan. 

PRO|D|ES Caravan is an action of the PRO|D|ES Project - Extended Digital Promotion of Dance, a collaboration among Cro.me, COORPI, and Compagnia della Quarta, supported by MiC.