Xenos. Performance Festival - program for November 13

Opening of the exhibition Metamorphosis of the Sacred by Teodora Axente and of XENOS performance festival

Exhibition halls - Level VI
at 6:00 p.m.

Institutional greetings

Through the gaze of Teodora Axente performed performance with Alessandra Cristiani, Jacopo Giarda and live music by the jazz trio of the Siena Jazz Academy directed by double bass player, composer, and teacher Silvia Bolognesi, with Matilde Gori on trumpet and Gerardo Pizza on sax starting from the works of Teodora Axente.
Everything is played out through improvisation arising from the gaze that the performers apply in observing the works of the Spanish artist who became a Belgian citizen. Together, they will explore the possibilities of free improvisation as a site of interaction between the body that observes, acts, and sounds, for a total synesthesia between human being and work of art.

The performed performance lasts 20 minutes.

Costumes Sara Butera

Alessandra Cristiani has been exploring Butō since 1996, founding Compagnia Lios and the festival Trasform’azioni. With a degree in Performing Arts Methodology and Criticism, she has worked with Akira Kasai, Roberto Latini, Daria Deflorian, and Silvia Rampelli. With the company Habillé d’eau she won the 2018 Ubu Prize with Euforia. Best Actress Critics Award 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 Teatro alla Scala Ballet School. Dancer at Compañia Nacional de Danza in Madrid, later at Opéra National de Paris and with the Ballet Company of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. He has performed solo roles in works by Forsythe, Kylián, Naharin, Ek, Balanchine, Inger, Bausch, León/Lightfoot, McGregor. Now also a freelancer, he collaborates with independent groups and choreographers such as Nicosia, Bolognino, Riva-Repele, Kratz, Ferrara.

Siena Jazz – National Jazz Academy, founded in 1977, is among the leading European institutions dedicated to jazz education and research. It promotes improvisation, creativity, and dialogue between languages, training artists capable of inhabiting the contemporary scene. At Xenos, it brings jazz as a meeting space between body, sound, and transforming identity.

Silvia Bolognesi is among the most authoritative voices of contemporary European jazz. Double bass player, composer, and sound designer, she works alongside Roscoe Mitchell and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Founder of the label Fonterossa Records, she curates the Fonterossa Day festival and directs the Fonterossa Open Orchestra, platforms devoted to research and improvisation.

Free entry while seats last

Jacopo Veneziani
The Gaze in Art 
lecture popular presentation by and with Jacopo Veneziani

Italo Calvino Hall - Level VII
at 7:00 p.m.
Duration 60 min.

Over the centuries, the gaze in art has taken unexpected directions.
From the Middle Ages, with the fixed and timeless eyes of icons, to the Renaissance that discovers psychological depth, to Caravaggio's games of gazes and the non-gazes of Magritte, Bacon, or Cindy Sherman: each era has found new ways of seeing and being seen. This talk is a journey through three interwoven perspectives: what the artist perceives in the world, what they choose to transform into an image, and what the viewer interprets with their own sensitivity. Because, in the end, the history of art is also a history of glances exchanged.

Jacopo Veneziani art historian and science communicator, graduated in art history from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He has published #Divulgo and Simmetrie (Rizzoli), and in 2023 La Grande Parigi (Feltrinelli). Previously a regular guest on “Le parole della settimana” (Rai3) and now on “In altre parole” (La 7) by Massimo Gramellini, he has been a juror in the last editions of “Il Borgo dei Borghi” (Rai3) and, from June 2025, will host “Vita d’artista” (Rai3). In 2024-2025, he brought the show Paris to the theater and is currently on stage with Perfette sconosciute. He also teaches the course “Communicating Art” at IULM University in Milan.

Free entry while seats last

Kor’sia
Renaissance 
site-specific performance by Kor’sia 
with Martina Anniciello, Giacomo Bertoni, Guibourg Julien and Samuel van der Veer

Pellegrinaio - Level IV
at 8:30 p.m.
Duration 30 min.

Rebirth, reactivation, and reopening between gesture and gaze
Renaissance is a choreographic action conceived for the Pellegrinaio Hall, an ancient place of healing now transformed into a place of memory and vision. In this space, laden with history and transformation, the bodies of four performers merge with the gaze and the architecture, becoming living matter among the frescoed walls; they listen and give back what time has deposited. The work faces the idea of rebirth, understood not as a return to the past but as movement toward the present: a physical and symbolic process in which the bodies reactivate the space, cross its wounds anew, and project new meanings onto it. The hall is not just a container but a living organism in which dance reopens questions, connections, and possibilities. In the dialogue between gesture and gaze, space and memory, Renaissance invites us to rethink the very concept of origin, belonging, and time. A choreographic rewriting rooted in the earth, looking toward the future.

Artistic direction Mattia Russo & Antonio de Rosa; choreography Mattia Russo & Antonio de Rosa, in collaboration with the performers; music by various artists; production Gabriel Blanco, Paola Villegas & Andrea Méndez (Spectare)

Kor’sia, an Italian-Spanish collective based in Madrid founded by choreographers Antonio de Rosa and Mattia Russo, develops its research starting from the body as a tool for reflection and emotion, creating performative devices that imagine new forms of existence. Supported by the Spanish Ministry of Culture and local institutions, it collaborates with prestigious companies and theaters internationally. With Mont Ventoux (2023) it received the Fedora Prize, Max Award, and was recognized by Time Out.

Admission by paid reservation only
Ticket: €5.00 + museum entrance
Reduced: €5.00 for resident citizens of Siena and students of Siena universities

The Gaze in Virtual Reality
Italo Calvino Hall – Level VII
from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

The second edition of XENOS cannot avoid further exploring that immersive dimension created by the encounter between real life and virtual life, between the tangible 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 based on choreography by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar with the dancers of the Royal Swedish Ballet. You can immerse yourself in these two worlds by wearing a headset and sitting comfortably in the designated space, appropriately in the Italo Calvino Hall, dedicated to someone who, before anyone else, explored the complexity of networks, interlinked systems, and multilayered perceptions of reality.

Free entry with 20 headsets 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, immersive dance film in which a dancer's body is manipulated through time using repetitions, delays, and frame repositioning. This creates 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 in 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; made 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 wrapped 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 Amsterdam University of the Arts. Since 2021 he is Young Creative Associate with the Dutch National Ballet. He worked with Nick Verstand on Within Without II and then the exhibition Spirituele Urgentie. His latest creation, The Ritual, debuted in 2023.

Robert Connor
HALF LIFE VR
digital performance by Robert Connor
based on choreography by Sharon Eyal and Gai Behar 
with the dancers of the Royal Swedish Ballet

Duration 11 min. 32 sec.

Precise, intense, and sharp-eyed
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 coproduction between the Royal Swedish Opera and Robert & Robert Studios. The VR production is inspired by 3D dance films such as Pina, with the aim of presenting 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 edit & post-production Robert Jonsson, Robert Connor; VR sound edit and mix Sebastian Lönberg

Robert Connor is a Swedish-American director. While at Stockholm Film School, he was determined to learn the language of cinematic storytelling and 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 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 given over 200 performances 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 action of the PRO|D|ES Project – Extended Digital Promotion of Dance, a collaboration between Cro.me, COORPI, and Compagnia della Quarta, with the support of MiC.