Xenos. Performance Festival - program for November 16

Delfina Stella
Workshop for girls and boys freely inspired by Italo Calvino’s Teatro dei Ventagli 
by and with Delfina Stella

Children’s Art Museum - IV  floor
from 10.30 to 12.00
Duration 1 hour and 30 min.

Two bodies is the second of a two-part meeting 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 museum and 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—through 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

Simone Arcagni and Domenico Prattichizzo
with Anna Lea Antolini
For a robotic performance
informative lecture by and with Simone Arcagni and Domenico Prattichizzo 
in dialogue with Anna Lea Antolini

Italo Calvino Hall – VII floor
from 11.00 to 12.00
Duration 60 min.

The world of performance, like every other world and piece of contemporary society, cannot ignore technology with its rapid evolutions and changes; it cannot help but be fascinated by it; it cannot help but engage itself by beginning to play a hybrid and multisensory role. In the Italo Calvino Hall, dedicated to immersion and crossovers between real and virtual, organic and digital, space is given to a reflection that starts from a fully Sienese excellence with international resonance: the experiments of Professor Domenico Prattichizzo and his team at Unisi. Domenico Prattichizzo, owner of several patents and revolutionary innovations in robotics, approaches the world of live performance reflecting with Simone Arcagni, Professor at IULM of Milan, to try to discover together if a robotic performance is possible.  

Free entry until seats run out

Simone Arcagni, Professor at the IULM University of Milan, consultant and curator of digital culture and media. He collaborates with Il Sole24Ore, FilmTV, and Rai, directs OnLive Campus and Metalab Naples, and curates exhibitions like Cinema and AI and NFT | Cinema. Author of Digital Visions and The Eye of the Machine, pioneer of "Postcinema," he is a consultant for Rai Cinema, Anica, and the National Cinema Museum, and curator of festivals and events related to cinema and digital technologies.

Domenico Prattichizzo  is a full professor at the University of Siena and an expert in human-centered robotics. His studies focus on wearable technologies and tactile interfaces that combine robotics and neuroscience. He is an IEEE Fellow and directs the SIRSLab. Co-author of the book "The Artificial Body," he has received awards for innovation in research and science communication.

Cristiano Leone
Performativity: ethics and poetics of relation
informative lecture by and with Cristiano Leone

Italo Calvino Hall – VII floor
from 12.00 to 13.00
Duration 60 min.

Performativity is no longer just a gesture that takes place within the space of a stage. It is an ethical and poetic act of relation that crosses bodies, technologies, architectures, and imaginaries. A ritual that expands beyond the boundaries of the visible, where the gaze becomes listening, touch, shared vibration. In this expansion, art does not merely represent: it becomes encounter, responsibility, transformation.

Free entry until seats run out

Yury Revich, Marta Ciappina & Giacomo Luci
Echoed bodies
Creation for violin, electronics and 2 performers
site-specific performance with violinist Yury Revich and performers Marta Ciappina & Giacomo Luci

'Corticella' – III floor
at 18.00 and 19.00 

The gaze upward toward the work of Jacob Hashimoto symbolizes the visual unison in which the entire audience is involved. This collective gaze is directed at all souls who have found shelter in Santa Maria della Scala in times past and memory in present times; it is directed at both the hosting and hosted community. The bodies of the 3 performers resonate in the delicacy and vigor of the violin played, in the shape of the space, in the relationship between what is visible and what is not, generating a suspended time with which the second edition of XENOS bids farewell to the eyes and feelings of each person.

Costumes Sara Butera

Yury Revich, Austrian violinist and composer, is internationally known for his unique and innovative artistic voice. Winner of the ECHO Klassik and International Classical Music Award, he has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Musikverein Vienna, and Teatro alla Scala. Composer of classical, cinematic, and electronic works, he founded the multidisciplinary platform Festival Nights in 2015. He has collaborated with artists, directors, and international festivals and is Honorary Representative of UNICEF Austria.

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, 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 Award as a performer and in 2023 the Ubu Award as a performer.

Giacomo Luci dancer, performer, and choreographer. He began as a soloist at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma in classical repertoire and continued at the Opéra de Lyon confronting contemporary dance from Forsythe, Bausch, Cunningham, Childs, and Brown. Since 2018 he has developed an autonomous choreographic research presented at international festivals, and in 2025 worked with Millepied, Chamblas, Tanowitz, and the collective bullyache.

Free entry until seats run out