Prayer

Virgilio Sieni’s new creation arises from the urgency to reflect on the present. A danced prayer in which seven performers rely on listening to the gesture to respond to the tragic nature of conflicts. Dance thus becomes an instrument of poetic and civic resistance. In this danced prayer simple creatures act, turning their attention to the mastery and details of the gesture to be surprised by the tragicness of events: remembering with the body to create a history of dance directed toward the Stasis, “the citizens’ rising in the extreme form of dissent.” Thus the dances take on the aspect of prayers that ally bodies with the political and plural right to appear, bodies that show themselves together with others, according to liturgies that move toward friendship. Opposing war becomes an act that inhabits the tiny space of a room, a meditative place. Unusual war dances that indicate the presence of something other than war, the awareness of commitment and, as Rebecca Solnit tells us, the strength to stay awake. Dates: - Tuesday 23 February at 8:30 pm - Wednesday 24 February at 7:00 pm