A dance of chiseled forms played on the search for possible balances of the body inhabited by resonances and voids. Existences projected from the body beyond the body, immersed in a tragic and sacred ceremony and framed in a polymorphic and enigmatic space.
This is how one could define the style of Virgilio Sieni, the choreographer with an unmistakable sign that draws its origins from a complex training path that integrates the Cunningham technique with Japanese martial arts, contact-improvisation and solid classical training.
Since 1992, at the head of the Company that bears his name, established following the dissolution of the Parco Butterfly group, Sieni has started an independent path focused on pure dance and inspired by great classical themes and figures that have characterized the productions L’Eclisse and Re Lear (’92), Amleto Ophelia (’93), Cantico (’93), Rosso Cantato (’95), Ghenos and Orestea (’96).
In more recent years, the Tuscan choreographer has relied on new investigations such as the one linked to the tragicomic theme of the relationship between fairy tales and illness: characters from the world of fairy tales and children's fiction such as Pinocchio are projected into an extreme and terminal moment, into a decidedly disturbing phantasmagorical and hallucinatory reality.
These are the contents of Trilogia del Niente which includes Babbino Caro. Pinocchiulus Sextet, Jolly Round is Hamlet and Il Funambolo from the homonymous poem by Jean Genet, but also of a singular event, La Casina dei Biscotti, created for a single spectator. Forced to follow an initiatory and olfactory path - the scent of cantucci, the traditional biscuits of Prato, which form the walls of the house - the spectator, alone, immerses himself in a world of elves who lead him on a psychoanalytic journey on the perception of himself and of others.
A further new thematic orientation of Virgilio Sieni now comes from the three-year project Vento-Aria-Vuoto (2002-2004) of which Oriente Occidente hosts and co-produces with the Teatro Ponchielli of Cremona the first stage: Vento. Nelle Costellazioni Silenziose.
The sense of crossing that the wind brings with it leads the choreographer to analyze the attitudes of defense and offense towards the environment, the tics and resistances of everyday life in an abstract choreographic articulation managed between two very distinct spaces: the above, the vision of the constellations, the extended and extraneous space, and the below or the actions of the dancers, icons of the impossibility of man to occupy the real center.
A sharp reflection on a path of listening and observation that leads from the outside to the interior. And at the same time the delimitation of an "other" space, shadowy, moved by elusive presences that nevertheless leave traces of their strangeness and their passage. This is the thrill of Virgilio Sieni's fluid and fragile dance in Vento.
