Xenos. Performance Festival - program for November 15

Giacomo Luci
Being in the Gaze
site-specific performance by and with Giacomo Luci

Cappella del Manto – IV level
from 16:00 to 18:00
Duration 2 hours

Watches and is watched, feels and is felt
Today's sensory device with Giacomo Luci starts again from the experience of the previous day lived with Marta Ciappina and the audience. Here, the performer gathers what was experimented, attempting a synthesis between the gazes to express his own relationship between the photographs of Olivo Barbieri, the Cappella del Manto, and the facing Duomo.

Giacomo Luci dancer, performer, and choreographer. Began as a soloist at the Rome Opera House in the classical repertoire, continued at the Opéra de Lyon confronting the contemporary dance of Forsythe, Bausch, Cunningham, Childs, and Brown. Since 2018 he has developed an independent choreographic research presented at international festivals, and in 2025 he works with Millepied, Chamblas, Tanowitz, and the bullyache collective.

Olivo Barbieri is among the most important contemporary Italian photographers. Active since 1978, since 1989 he has traveled regularly in the East, especially in China. In the nineties, he participated in several editions of the Venice Biennale and numerous international events. In 1996 the Museum Folkwang of Essen dedicated a retrospective to him. Famous for the Site Specific projects, he transformed the urban landscape into new visions exhibited in the world’s leading museums.

Free admission, continuous flow experience

Delfina Stella
Two Bodies
Workshop for girls and boys freely inspired by Italo Calvino's Fan Theater 
by and with Delfina Stella

Children’s Art Museum - IV level
from 16:00 to 17:30
Duration 1 hour and 30 min.

Two Bodies is a double encounter to explore, with the body, new ways of seeing, touching, and inventing. Visible and invisible objects will guide the creation of instant dances, in dialogue between the museum and the city. A playful and creative experience between movement and imagination.

Delfina Stella is a dancer and researcher active in the field of arts pedagogy and ecology. Through choreography, movement research, writing and play, she creates actions and educational and performative contexts that intertwine being and doing, seeking—in practice and theory—how the languages of the body and dance can be tools for coexistence and enhancement of cultural and environmental heritage.

14 places available by reservation – ages 7 to 10

Alessandra Cristiani & Jacopo Giarda
In the Gaze of Teodora Axente 
enacted performance by and with  Alessandra Cristiani & Jacopo Giarda 
starting from the works by Teodora Axente

Exhibition Halls - VI level
from 18:00 to 20:00 (18:00, 18:30,19:00,19:30 and 20:00)
Duration 20 min

The Gaze that Answers Back

Everything revolves around improvisation, which arises from the gaze that the performers adopt in observing the works of the Spanish artist naturalized Belgian. Together they explore the possibilities of free improvisation as a place of interaction between the body that observes and acts, and that is observed and acted upon, for total synesthesia between the human being and the artwork.

Costumes Sara Butera

Alessandra Cristiani since 1996 has explored Butō, founding the Lios company and the review Trasform’azioni. Graduated in Performance Methodology and Critique, she has worked with Akira Kasai, Roberto Latini, Daria Deflorian and Silvia Rampelli. With the company Habillè d’eau she won the 2018 Ubu Prize with 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 of Madrid, then at the Opera National de Paris and with the Ballet Company of the Rome Opera House. He has performed solo roles by choreographers such as Forsythe, Kylián, Naharin, Ek, Balanchine, Inger, Bausch, León/Lightfoot, McGregor. Now also freelance, he collaborates with independent companies and choreographers such as Nicosia, Bolognino, Riva-Repele, Kratz, Ferrara.

Free admission until full capacity is reached

Riccardo Giovinetto
FEMINA | IRIS 
Audio-Video Installation by Riccardo Giovinetto

Sala Italo Calvino - VII level
from 18:20 to 20:30 
with slots at 18:20, 18:50, 19:20, and 19:50
Duration 9 min.

A digital gaze upon grace, between Renaissance and artificial intelligence
FEMINA | IRIS is an immersive dual-screen installation that merges endlessly transforming digital images: quadraphonic electronic music and vocal polyphonies inspired by Renaissance madrigals. A sensory and contemplative experience, inviting a reconsideration of the idea of grace through the lens of contemporary technology. At the core of the project is the Renaissance gaze upon the female figure: portraits by Piero della Francesca, Ghirlandaio, Leonardo, and Bronzino are evoked as archetypes of beauty and harmony. The golden ratio enters into dialogue with alternative proportions, while ancient voices, digitally manipulated, blend with electronic textures sculpted into the spatial sound. FEMINA | IRIS envisions an artificial intelligence that learns and reinterprets the concept of grace: an abstract and sensitive journey exploring the boundaries of contemporary digital figuration.

Project Riccardo Giovinetto; composition and programming Riccardo Giovinetto, Lorenzo Forges Davanzati;
A/V Installation format | 2ch VIDEO, 4ch AUDIO

Riccardo Giovinetto visual and multimedia artist, physicist and university lecturer, creates audio-video performances, installations and concert compositions. With FEMINA he debuted at the Ars Electronica Festival 2023 and received the Videocittà Awards 2024 as best AV performance. In 2010 he founded OZMOTIC, an electronic and instrumental music duo, collaborating with orchestras and international artists. He teaches Acoustics, Electroacoustics, and Sound Design at the SAE Institute and at Alto Perfezionamento Musicale of Saluzzo.

Free admission until full capacity is reached


Arno Schuitemaker
O S C A R 
itinerant performance by and with Arno Schuitemaker
with Arno Schuitemaker, Ivan Ugrin, Mark Christoph Klee, Paolo Yao

From museum entrance to Sala San Pio – IV level
at 18:30 and repeat at 20:00
Duration 30 min.
With the support of the Embassy and Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands

O S C A R an engaging moving portrait, between intimacy, identity and transformation
O S C A R is a powerful physical reflection on the concept of portrait, not only of the three performers on stage, but also of the audience observing them. In this work, the Dutch choreographer Arno Schuitemaker weaves three consecutive solos in which movement becomes a tool for exploring identity, memory, and personal experience. The show unfolds as a path of emancipation: intimate, dynamic, and deeply human, O S C A R tells of the desire for freedom beyond any imposed limit. The portrait here is not a simple representation: it is a living process, full of meanings, capable of bringing out dialogue between the visible and invisible, between individual experiences and collective dimensions. A continuous shift between reflection and projection, between self and other. Arno Schuitemaker is known for his hyper-physical style, in which dance, visual arts, and club culture merge into immersive and sensorial experiences. His works, presented in over 25 countries, involve the audience physically, emotionally, and imaginatively. With The Way You Sound Tonight, he received the prestigious “Zwaan” award, the top recognition for dance in the Netherlands.

Music Aart Strootman; costumes Sarah Nixon; production SHARP/ArnoSchuitemaker

Arno Schuitemaker performer, creates hyper-physical works where dance, performance, visual arts and club culture meet. His carefully layered works explore the interaction between the intimate and the collective, making each performance an immersive experience that unites body, emotion, and imagination. Presented in over 25 countries, among his most acclaimed creations: 30 appearances out of darkness, The way you sound tonight (Zwaan prize 2019) and I will wait for you.

Free admission until full capacity is reached

Stefania Ballone, Alice Mariani, Marta Ciappina, Choir of the Siena Cathedral “Guido Chigi Saracini”
Invisio
site-specific performance directed by Stefania Ballone 

with Alice Mariani prima ballerina of Teatro alla Scala in Milan 
Marta Ciappina Ubu Prize best performer 2023 
and the Choir of the Siena Cathedral “Guido Chigi Saracini” conducted by Maestro Lorenzo Donati 
with sopranos Luisa Cipolla, Elisa Grico, Jae Kho Myung, and Francesca Panzolini; the altos Emma Alessi Innocenti, Raissa Appannati, Elisabetta Vuocolo; tenors Alessio Chiuppesi, Luca Lippi, Dario Maddii; basses Raffaello Brutti, Roberto Locci, and Jeffrey Scott Shapiro.

Pellegrinaio – IV level
at 20:30 and repeat at 21:30
Duration 30 min.

An invitation to let oneself be led by the light into the heart of the labyrinth
Invisio is a poetic passage through a labyrinth of light and shadow. Bodies move like suspended presences, following paths that intertwine, get lost, and find each other again, tracing invisible journeys through space. The light becomes both guide and deception, now revealing, now hiding, sculpting gestures and architectures in a continuous game of appearance and disappearance. Every step is a threshold, every gaze a possible orientation, every shadow a portal to cross. In this labyrinth of memories and resonances, the viewer is called to undertake an inner journey: not so much towards an exit, but towards an invisible center, a space of perception and listening where the tangible and the ephemeral meet. Invisio is an invitation to let yourself be led by the light into the heart of the labyrinth, where the invisible takes shape through the bodies.

Musical pieces Ave Maris Stella, Gregorian chant 11th century, Liber Usualis; ⁠Arvo Pärt (Paide, 1935), Da pacem Domine, Universal 2004; Terry Riley (Colfax, CA, 1935) Olson III, 1966; Lorenzo Donati (Arezzo, 1972), pieces from Cities, 55 fragments inspired by Invisible Cities by I. Calvino; Vittoria Aleotti (Ferrara, 1575 - after 1620), T'amo mia vita, from "Ghirlanda dei madrigali a quattro voci", Vincenti, Venice 1593

costumes designed and made by Matteo Tolve

Stefania Ballone, dancer of the Teatro alla Scala ballet company and choreographer, joined in 2000 after graduating from the ballet school of La Scala, also performing soloist roles. Associate artist of MilanoOltre, she has created choreographies such as SoulEtude and Lascaux. She collaborates with Roberto Bolle for Viva la Danza and various galas. In 2024 she debuted with Grimm at Alberta Ballet Company, achieving great success.

Alice Mariani born in Massa in 1992, trained at the ballet school of Teatro alla Scala, graduating in classical and contemporary dance. After her time at Semperoper Ballet in Dresden as Principal Dancer, in 2022 she was appointed Principal Dancer at Teatro alla Scala. She has performed major roles of the classical repertoire and worked with internationally renowned choreographers, receiving numerous prestigious awards.

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

The Choir of the Siena Cathedral “Guido Chigi Saracini” was founded in September 2016 thanks to the fruitful collaboration between the Accademia Musicale Chigiana and the Opera della Metropolitana di Siena. Composed of singers from all over Italy, it combines liturgical service with concerts of high artistic value both a cappella and with orchestra, with a repertoire ranging from the Renaissance to Romanticism, dedicating ample space to the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Numerous world premieres, including Seven Prayers by T. Mansurian, Sei Studi sull’Inferno di Dante , and Stabat Mater by G. Sollima conducted by Riccardo Muti in Lampedusa, prime time on Rai Uno.

Lorenzo Donati, composer and conductor, studied in Arezzo, Fiesole, Siena, and Rome, attending advanced courses at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, the Guido d’Arezzo Foundation, the School of Music in Fiesole, and the French Academy. Among others, he studied with R. Clemencic, A. Corghi, P. Dusapin, D. Fasolis, G. Graden and E. Morricone. He is the most awarded Italian conductor at both national and international level in choral competitions. Since 2016 he has conducted the Choir of the Siena Cathedral “Guido Chigi Saracini”. He teaches choral music and choir conducting at the Conservatorio di Venezia and since 2017 is lecturer at the Accademia Chigiana of Siena.

Admission with fee and reservation
Ticket: €5.00 + museum entrance
Reduced: €5.00 for residents of the Municipality of Siena and university students in Siena

The Gaze in Virtual Reality
Sala Italo Calvino – VII level
from 18:30 to 20:30

The second edition of XENOS could not fail to continue investigating that immersive dimension generated by the meeting between real and virtual life, between the concrete gaze and the post-organic gaze. The Gaze in Virtual Reality offers an immersion in the world of virtual reality with the experience WAVE by Bart Hess, with choreography and performance by Sedrig Dimitri Verwoert; and HALF LIFE VR by Robert Connor from the choreographic work of Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar with the dancers of the Royal Swedish Ballet. You can immerse yourself in these two worlds by putting on a headset and comfortably sitting in the dedicated space—specifically, the Sala Italo Calvino, named after one who, ahead of his time, explored the complexity of networks, interconnected systems, and multilayered perceptions of reality.

Free admission with 20 headsets available for continuous use

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 in time through repetitions, delays, and repositioning of frames. This creates a choreography in which the history of a movement generates a new type of organism. It is a group choreography performed alone, 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 a 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 blends design, fashion and art, exploring materials, technology, and virtual reality. His tactile and intuitive work investigates the human body shrouded in forms reminiscent more of performance art and science fiction than fashion. He creates material studies, videos, animations, and photographs, exploring 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 has been Young Creative Associate of the Dutch National Ballet. He has collaborated with Nick Verstand on Within Without II and later on 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 of Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar 
with the dancers of the Royal Swedish Ballet

Duration 11 min. 32 sec.

Accurate, intense, and razor-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 film is a co-production between the Royal Swedish Opera and Robert & Robert Studios. The VR production is inspired by 3D dance films such as Pina, aiming to present a unique artistic and immersive experience, a sharp projection of language, movements, and the 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 to convert it into a language for virtual reality. Robert is establishing himself worldwide as one of the pioneers of incredible VR cinematic experiences.

Sharon Eyal, co-founder, co-artistic director and choreographer of L-E-V. She danced with the Batsheva Dance Company (1990-2008) and began choreographing with 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 over 200 shows in international festivals and theaters such as Joyce Theatre, Sadler's Wells and Montpellier Danse Festival.

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

PRO|D|ES Caravan is an initiative of PRO|D|ES Project – Widespread Digital Promotion of Dance, a collaboration between Cro.me, COORPI and Compagnia della Quarta, with support from MiC.