Tiny, first weekend

The first time Viola talked to me about this project, I felt a chill run through my upper back. Technology and dance? Mhmmm, it really doesn’t resonate with me. Then, I let my faith in Viola, in the process, and in things as they are, take the place of mistrust. Maybe it could be a challenge and, anyway, a great opportunity to cultivate the not knowing, the beginner’s mind. The first pillars of awareness.

Since my presence is an internship as part of the Silvio D’Amico Academy’s master’s program in dramaturgy, the idea was to witness the work, to put myself at its service, at its disposal. We’ve called it “dramaturgical diary”. A gaze oscillating between inside and outside. What we would like to do is not “research” deriving from the Latin ri-, intensifying function, and circare, to go around the object you are looking for. When we do research, in a way we know what we want to find. Instead, this process between writing and movement is more similar to Florensky’s stroll, walking together without knowing what the path will offer but letting ourselves be surprised by what we will find. A way to cultivate unknowingness and be open to the unfolding of reality instant by instant.

I don’t know what to expect. I have never met Carlo. I know Viola, Lisa, Flavio, and Nadja because we shared a series of mindfulness practices right here at BTT, where I feel super at home. I don’t know Luca very well. He joined the company later.

It would be easy for me to write a diary, a report of what happens, but I don’t think it would add anything to the recording of everything, audio, video. I will try to bring my perspective here, then.

The question is, what is the right distance? How close can I get without the others experiencing my presence as an intrusion in their space, in their intimacy? How much of a resource can I be by simply being there?

I don’t know. I don’t have an answer. The only thing I can do is activate a deep connection with what’s happening, breathe together, let tiny antennae of awareness grow on my skin, in my senses, and stay. The rest will come.

We are in a circle. Carlo explains his idea of starting with what’s furthest from technology. Memory, recollection. Going back instead of forward, into the roots. The present is nothing but past and future together, a bridge between what we were and will be, an eternal becoming. This is the “here and now”. Not a picture but a movie, movement, flow.

Truth is connection, intimacy, immersion. Rite, ritual action, sharing. Immersion.

Not the “behind the scenes”. This is not what I should write. “Rite” settles somewhere in me. RT is something I keep, like a marker note, highlighted.

Home movies of when we were little. Carlo wants to start with the furthest thing from technology there is. The spectator will wear a VR headset and will see the dancer as a kid grappling with their childhood.

In my day, my grandad used to film Super8 movies. Today, we watch Nadja playing the harp, sticking out her tongue because she makes a mistake, singing, dancing, unwrapping presents, dragging a suitcase, moving a shoe as if it were the most important thing in the world, with that kind of presence that absorbs everything. The whole world is in that shoe. Grandparents and parents around her, the wooden horse, the emotion in Nadja’s shining eyes today.

Lisa is 8 years old. She is dancing a variation from“Swaaannn Lake” on the Disney Club. It’s a competition, she wants to win. Sorry, Roberta.

The work begins.

10 minutes to write about a theme and then, like popcorn, whoever wishes can read what they wrote by addressing one person, not the group.

I don’t know whether I should do it as well or not. Yes, it seems like a good idea.

The first theme is My Story. I am a creature in movement. I like to explore and to always be a bit uncomfortable. I like beginnings. To begin. To lose balance. I write. It’s the only constant in my whirling. As a kid, I used to write poems at night, hiding with a little light under the covers so as to not wake my sister up. I have always written. Adverts, books, articles. I like the journey of writing. I am in one world when I start and in another at the end. This way, I get to know myself. I like to flow with the river, the sea, with life. I like the colours, the vibrations, the waves. I feel more at ease in the unknown than in the familiar. Music, especially classical music, keeps me company. So does dance, in various ways. I meditate and observe change. I stay. I don’t always manage to let go.

The second is My First Memory. I’m in kindergarten. The nun is showing me the tiny sinks and bathrooms. It was I who asked to go to school in order not to sit around at home doing nothing, but I don’t know whether this is a memory of mine or something my parents told me.

The third is My First Memory Regarding Dance or Movement. Here I pause and think of the dance classes in elementary school, the lower-back flat to the floor, the recitals wearing tutus. Then I observe the others while they write. The concentration is very high.

The fourth is A Place in Turin I Am Attached to. I have zero doubts, it’s the river. Because my grandparents and then my parents and I used to live on the Lungo Po riverside. Because I row and observe the seasons from the most beautiful spot in the city. Now the birds are nesting. Before that there was snow, not much, holding onto the walls facing north and even before that there were the changing colours of autumn. And then coots, grebes, herons, the two geese of the islet, a landing mallard, and a duck protesting because we got too close. The precise spot is between the Armida and Cerea Clubs, on the water or the Armida Terrace.

The fifth is Someone I Am Attached to and Why. It’s my sister because life puts many sisters on your path, but a biological sister is someone that, even though you might not look alike and there might be strangeness, always represents home, coming back, memories.

The sixth is One Intimate Secret. I went through an ugly period of depression, which I overcame with medication and one month of just eating and sleeping. Mainly sleeping. One day, I understood that an anaesthetized life – one without pain, yes, but also without being able to taste the difference between one wine and another – made no sense. Some other resources that came to me were yoga, art therapy, a few years later psychotherapy, and mindfulness. And the depression never came back.

Now, after this block of 5, we form a circle, and each person reads what they wrote or narrates it to another person. Flavio feels like a child inside, he is Neapolitan and has a passion for glasses. Nadja is transparent, introverted but curious, and empathetic. Viola has eyes like windows and her skin reflects emotions. It has taken her a long time to discover herself, there is melancholy and indirect light. Luca loves volleyball. He wanted to act but there weren’t any acting schools in his city. He is determined, sensitive, and stubborn. He feels guilty. Lisa has had many lives and a happy childhood, although with some turbulence. She loves studying and collecting. She has an immense family and immense is her bag.

Luca remembers Nina, the green-eyed kid in kindergarten who moved to another city, and he has never heard of her since. This reminds me of Alberto, who moved to Avigliana in first grade. I had a crush on him, but he had a crush on Cecilia. When she was sick, Lisa would stay at home from school and hear her mom cutting fabrics, with each one making its music. She used to make trains out of chairs, take Monopoly money, wear her baby doll’s hat and off she went. Viola lived in a house with hedgehogs, owls, turtledoves, and her dog Arcibaldo. She had big eyes and red cheeks, which everyone used to touch. Flavio didn’t want to go to kindergarten, he used to cling to his mom’s leg and say “Pashiania” instead of “Champagne”. I wonder where that tape of my cousin Claudia making me spell “Sa-la-mi-na” one syllable at a time and of me saying “Samalina” when putting it together went. Nadja couldn’t say “Pinocchio” and one night she woke up because she was thirsty and started calling for her parents, who had gone out. Everything was dark and her anxiety was rising until their neighbour came in and brought her to her house to watch a documentary about pigs. When mum and dad returned they felt guilty, it was their first time going out and leaving Nadja at home.

Viola used to play the elastics game in the courtyard, dance standing on her dad’s feet and cry when her mom danced in the role of Juliette and died. Luca went to the musical academy. Nadja wanted to do ballet, but they enrolled her in a kids’ dance course. One time, in a holiday village in Calabria, Flavio was dancing under flashing lights with his sister and hasn’t stopped since. Lisa used to sing to Whitney Houston and play following the lines on her carpet.

Nadja loves Porta Susa because that’s where she arrived when she first came to Torino, but why are there two metro stations? It’s confusing. Flavio loves the courtyard of his old house, which he could see through bars. A prison that made him free. Viola has a spot near the Mole, a place of happiness and secrets where time stops. Lisa loves the counter of a restaurant near her home and tries not to get attached to places. Luca loves the Valentino Park and the bar down the street where a spritz is €2,50.

Important people, with whom we have a close bond, make tears of joy and gratitude flow.

Nadja has a close relationship with her aunt and is attached to her calm and warm voice. Lisa allows the emotion to rush in and then talks about Sergio, her mother’s partner. Viola has a favourite aunt as well, a hideaway in the woods and many useless objects. And then for Flavio there’s Mom, always available, together with a lot of emotion. For Luca, it’s Mom and Grandma.

Viola’s intimate secret is that disco where no one was allowed to enter, a sort of cave made of chairs in the house at the seaside. But then Sandrino, who was in love with her in middle school, comes along and one day he pushes her to the ground and covers her with kisses. From that moment, Viola thought that it was better to not be liked. Luca has damaged his body with weight gain and alcohol. He was bullied and to hell with that classmate who took his exam paper, put it in his pants and said to him: “Now you can masturbate”. He also used to steal kiwis. Flavio was bullied as well, and he learned to look for ways out. Lisa used to make magical potions with plants and little animals, which she then left inside closets. Nadja lives in Italy and wonders whether she wants to stay here or go back.

After the first five points, some dance with words, others between and through them.

The sixth is A Frequent Thought/Obsession. For me, it’s the fear of meaninglessness. But also food. I often think about what to eat, buy, and cook. The seventh is Something That Makes Me Laugh and I burst out laughing anytime someone stumbles and falls. The clumsier the fall, the more I laugh. It’s the classic banana peel. The eighth is What Makes Me Cry. With some music, it’s automatic for me. Be it Schindler’s List’s soundtrack, Bohème’s finale, or certain piano compositions by Schumann or Schubert. The ninth is What I Would Like to Turn Into, and a peacock pops up, spreading its tail and showing itself without fear, aware of its beauty. There isn’t even a bit of arrogance, just beauty and perfection. The tenth is An Intimate Pleasure/Secret. After a shower, I like to dry myself, get into bed naked, feel the contact with the sheets, and let the heat evaporate.

Lisa is obsessed with anything that starts with “It would be nice to…”, with what’s best, efficiency and the fear of misunderstanding. Nadja is obsessed with “What do I have to do to…”, with being ready for what happens next in order to give her best and be ready for everything. Luca wonders why he is unable to cry, why can’t he? Flavio is obsessed with food and the wine to pair with it. Viola with work as a dream, as an obsession. What if she were to suddenly die?

Nadja laughs at funny animals and cries about situations of poverty. Flavio laughs when tickled and cries for children impacted by tragedies; Lisa laughs because of light-heartedness and cries because of violence; Luca laughs at “Home Alone 3” and cries when people close to him are suffering. Viola laughs on amusement rides and when tickled, cries because of other people’s life stories and at happy endings in American rom-coms.

There wasn’t movement today. Dance was in the words. Some use words in a poetic way, some associate them with a piece of music that is dance, some use them in a simple way, some make them resonate, and some struggle to let them surface on certain topics.

Lunch is shared, with everybody in the same room. Some people brought food from home. Vegetarian meatballs, eggs, vegetables, single portions of cheese, crackers. Others go out to buy charcuterie and salad in a bag. The artichokes and quinoa I brought fit well in the mix.

I was curious to see what people who work with their bodies eat. Some people are on a diet, others don’t eat much. The break is short, 30 minutes, and then we get back in the studio.

Density, intensity, gratitude. This is what I am taking home today.

“Movement plus intention = action,” says Carlo. He explains that he is looking for a methodology. There is a method, but it is built gradually together. The word “method” contains meta, which brings with it the idea of ‘pursuing’, and odos, which means ‘way’. To look for a way, together. The relationship is essential. Just like in Florensky’s stroll. Not knowing what you are looking for beforehand, surrendering to the flow, and having faith in the process. This is another pillar of awareness. We had a moment of formal mediation with the guys, and now the practice turns into experience, staying.

No representation, no pantomime, no didacticism.

Today the words written yesterday become expression. 10 minutes to elaborate in the space, 2 minutes to write, and then it’s time to show. There is a camera, but it’s always a one-to-one relationship.

I like seeing recurring gestures in the studio. Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe it’s not. A tapping of fingers on the belly is repeated on the floor and then elsewhere. I look, observe, write. I also would like to do things with my body, to move, but it is not my role here. If I did it, maybe it wouldn’t be a problem. Viola thinks that dance belongs to everybody, just as I think words belong to everybody.

Luca sings in a whisper the lyrics of an Italian song to Nadja: “I want to rock you, rock you on a wave of the sea, the sea, tie you to a grain of sand so you can’t run away in the fog, so you’d stay beside me”.

Nadja would like to turn into an elephant. Luca in a white fox or thermal water. Lisa into sound, Viola into a chameleon. Flavio into a long-legged stilt walker.

Carlo would like to be a worm to feel the dense contact with the earth, but he could also be a root or a tuber.

Nadja enjoys reading out loud in Italian or English, she finds her breathing while reading calming. Lisa likes swimming naked in the sea. Viola loves falling asleep to someone reading to her. Luca enjoys that particular moment after an exam or a show. Flavio loves flirting.

11. One Aspect of My Intimacy. For many, this is a difficult task.

Flavio loves being flattered. Nadja is always looking for meaning. Lisa possesses a spiritual-oneiric side. Luca talks about removing layers of the body, invisible coats. Viola mentions melancholy, light entering from within, and vibrations with the people around her.

Viola wanted her name to be Cecilia because, when she was little, Viola was an uncommon name. Cecilia was poor and wanted to ice skate. Her parents couldn’t afford to buy her ice skates, but the teacher decided to give her free lessons and Cecilia won a trophy that was bigger than herself.

12. What I Cannot Tolerate.

Viola strays off-topic, in a positive way, and talks about what she loves. She loves brave people, who take risks, who make choices, and who see the good in things. Not victims, but people who organize their lives around the things that happen to them. Lisa cannot tolerate dishonesty. Luca self-pity. Flavio can’t tolerate lies and being deceived. Nadja can’t stand tardiness and unwillingness to listen to others.

Flavio speaks of light and smiles. Viola mentions songs, flowers, a laid table at the seaside at the end of September, people by the fire with a guitar, swimming in the darkness at night with the mystery of not being able to see what’s underneath. For Nadja, it’s listening. Lisa hasn’t thought about it but says gratitude and a way of staying. Luca wonders whether he will be remembered, he is afraid of not leaving a mark. Does the relationship remain?

I would like to remain as a bright powder on beautiful books, healing words, and objects of everyday use. Like a teaspoon, a pen, a cup of tea.

14 I Want to Tell You.

Luca: “I miss you, but I’ve made it”. Viola: “I often don’t love myself, but you make me feel right and appreciated”. Flavio: “Not all is well. There is always something wrong, but it’s okay, we must accept and welcome change”. Lisa: “Thank you, but also, I’m sorry”. Nadja: “We must trust and not get lost in concern. We don’t have to do everything alone and always be strong, we can show our fragility”. Carlo: “Sometimes evolution and change have to be accepted for what they are and if we are unable to do that, we need to find the conditions to accept and accept ourselves”.

“For me, dancing is a means of communication. I work in long, three-year cycles. I have worked on human savageness, and before that on pain. Now I am working on metamorphosis, change, and transformation. This work fits perfectly. The process is cathartic, this is the ritual of theatre.

Each creation is not a standalone piece, but one link of a chain. They are the dots you connect in the crossword magazines, in which the shape becomes gradually more and more defined.”

This is a topic to further investigate with Alessandra Consolaro, my PhD thesis supervisor and an expert in Sanskrit.

On the same train of thought, “arthrosis” would mean a, alpha privative, and rt, that which does not flow well.

“Articulation”, then, is something that flows. Also “cathartic”. Is RT the opposite of TR? Treaty, trans, transformation, through.

Carlo has two notebooks. In one – which is in turn divided into two, to be done and done – he writes the things that happen. In the other, he writes the things that have been processed.

Today’s job is a reworking of the tasks in a free, 5- to 7-minute-long composition consisting of a mix of words and dance, and even songs, to present to the camera.

Key points: the first point must be My Story and What I Would Want My Legacy to Be must be the last. Try to touch all of them. Be concrete in a horizontal narration, a journey, a slideshow of one’s life to be adapted to each one’s places of the heart, without holding back on words or actions.

An itinerary that begins at the Mole, where there’s Viola, stops at Flavio’s in San Salvario, and from there continues until the Valentino Park for Luca, then passes by Lisa’s house, and ends at Porta Susa.

A little bit like in “Sardina” – a game of hide and seek where, when you found someone, you started hiding with them –, who is done with the task follows Carlo and me into the next phase.

Towards the last stop, a homeless man with one shoe and one sock, a jacket with filthy white sleeves, and a dignified posture and voice gets on the metro. He asks for money to eat and wash. There’s indifference all around. Immediately, a stab of pain in my lower back paralyses me, I think of those who talked about poverty and flounder in my thoughts. I have 30 cents because my transportation card wasn’t working so I had to use cash, which I even had to exchange with some very kind teens because mine was crinkled and wouldn’t get accepted. The homeless man arrives at the door and, before getting off, with perfect performative timing, says: “It’s better to die”. Carlo and I look at each other petrified.

Meanwhile, here we are at Porta Susa. I am on the phone with Viola to retrieve Carlo’s backpack, who is about to leave. Here comes Flavio on his bike with the backpack.

I get back home. Today I have walked 19.187 steps and 10 floors, 12,7 kilometres. I have entered the houses, courtyards, and spaces chosen by each person. Everyone was much more intense in the place, maybe because they had been rehearsing and the body was more engaged. Or maybe because the places you love, like people, guide you, vibrate and resonate.

So much generosity in showing themselves and being there. I feel like I have received a lot and given little, only my presence. Many gestures, words, and movements have entered my heart.

The heart is a hollow organ, it has “a wall that encloses a light fit for receiving substance”. My heart is now full of pieces of memory, intimacy, and received gifts.

Viola has often mentioned skin, Nadja listening, Luca has sung, Flavio likes glasses, and Lisa used to make magical potions. For this reason, I feel like assigning a sense to each. Viola-touch, Nadja-hearing, Luca-taste, Flavio-sight, Lisa-smell. But maybe it’s all mixable. Lisa wanted to be sound and used to listen to the music of the fabrics being cut by her mom. Flavio thinks often about food. Viola had eyes like windows. Luca used to seek contact. Nadja would like to be an elephant with its nose-trunk.

In the days following the first weekend, I felt gratitude, a sort of cheerful expansion of the chest and a heightening of the antennae, as if microsensors were coming out of the pores of my skin enabling me to connect with the feeling of others, a form of compassion, in the sense of ‘suffering with’, ‘feeling together’.

The research on the etymology of the words Art Rite Theater, connected with Rta, continued. I asked for advice from Alessandra Consolaro, professor of Hindi and Indian Literature at the University of Turin and my PhD thesis supervisor.

She said to be careful with etymology, as it is not an exact science (do they even exist?) but an interpretative one where everyone, to some degree, finds what they are looking for.

Maybe this is what I like, not the confirmation of biases, but the hermeneutical aspect, the philosophical research.

Alessandra confirms what I found on Wikipedia.

(I report below for convenience)

Ṛta (ऋत), also Rita, is a Sanskrit masculine term found in the most ancient Vedas. Rta indicates the “cosmic order” which regulates and coordinates the operation of the universe and everything within it. It also indicates a sacred custom, meaning the association between sacrificial rite and the universe to which it is closely tied. It is, then, a prelude to the later and more widespread term Dharma.

The term Rta derives from Ṛ (Sanskrit root meaning “to move”) and *ar (Indo-European root meaning “in an appropriate way”), therefore “to move, behave, in an appropriate way”. So Rta acquires the full meaning of “cosmic order”, or Reality moving forward without oppositions or obstacles. Through the Indo-European root *ar, the term is related to the Greek harmos, from which the Italian “armonia” (Eng. ‘harmony’) and the Latin ars, from which comes “arte” (Eng. ‘art’), derive.

I also ask her about other words or roots containing “Rt”. She mentions “rtu”, which is read “riti” and means “season”, “recurring period of time”. I associate rite with something that recurs. Maybe it’s exactly -ri that derives from here. Words and thoughts are running, the second always faster than the first.

A few days later, Alessandra sends me the definition from the Monier Williams Sanskrit dictionary. Here it is.

ṛtu (us), m. (Uṇ. i, 72 ) any settled point of time, fixed time, time appointed for any action (esp. for sacrifices and other regular worship), right or fit time, RV. ; AV. ; VS. [ID=38547]

an epoch, period (esp. a division or part of the year), season (the number of the divisions of the year is in ancient times, three, five, six, seven, twelve, thirteen, and twenty-four; in later time six seasons are enumerated, viz. Vasanta, ‘spring’; Grīṣma, ‘the hot season’; Varṣās (f. pl. nom.), ‘the rainy season’ Śarad, ‘autumn’; Hemanta, ‘winter’; and Śiśira, ‘the cool season’; the seasons are not infrequently personified, addressed in Mantras, and worshipped by libations), RV.; AV.; VS. &c., MBh. ; Mn. &c. [ID=38548]

She also sends me the verbal root ṛ.

ṛ cl. 1. 3. 5.P. ṛcchati, iyarti, ṛṇoti, and ṛṇvati (only Ved.);

āra, ariṣyati, ārat, and ārṣīt, to go, move, rise, tend upwards, RV.; Nir. &c.;

to go towards, meet with, fall upon or into, reach, obtain, RV.; AV.; ŚBr. ; ChUp. ; MBh. &c.;

to fall to one’s share, occur, befall (with acc.), RV.; AitBr. ; ŚBr. ; Mn. &c.;

to advance towards a foe, attack, invade, ŚBr. ; MBh. ; Mn. ;

to move, excite, erect, raise, (iyarti vācam, he raises his voice, RV. ii, 42, 2; stomān iyarmi, I sing hymns, RV. i, 116, 1), RV.; AV. vi, 22, 3 :

Caus. arpayati, to cause to move, throw, cast, AV. x, 9, 1; Ragh. &c.;

to cast through, pierce, AV. ;

to put in or upon, place, insert, fix into or upon, fasten, RV.; Śāk. ; Kum. ; Bhag. &c.;

to place on, apply, Kathās. ; Ratnāv. ; Ragh. &c.;

to direct or turn towards, R.; Bhag. &c.;

to deliver up, surrender, offer, reach over, present, give, Yājñ.; Pañcat. ; Vikr. &c.;

to give back, restore, Mn. viii, 191; Yājñ. ; Śak. &c.: Ved. Intens. alarti, RV. viii, 48, 8;

(2. sg. alarṣi, RV. viii, 1, 7; Pāṇ. vii, 4, 65);

to move or go towards with speed or zeal: Class. Intens. Ā. arāryate (Pāṇ. vii, 4, 30), to wander about, haste towards, Bhaṭṭ.; Pat. , Kāś. ; [ID=38410]

ṛ [cf. Gk. ὄρ–νυ-μι, ἐρ–έ–της, ἀρό–ω, &c. : Zend √ir : Lat. or-ior, re-mus, aro : Goth. ar-gan: Angl.Sax. ār: Old High Germ. ruo-dar, ar-an: Lith. ir-ti, ‘to row’; ar-ti, ‘to plough’.] [ID=38410.1]

There is movement in the r, andare (to go), muovere (to move), accadere (to happen).

Always on the topic of -AR, I think it’s interesting to research the roots of Armonia (harmony). I ask the Treccani encyclopaedia. It presents me with a beautiful essay you can find here:

https://www.treccani.it/magazine/chiasmo/lettere_e_arti/Armonia/armonia_metamorfosi_parola_armonia.html?fbclid=IwAR0LjaLXm-Nn_WeQ7Aj3ILXb8NouO8RJjGiBcwwNvLtrWsJN7_S5lS5Zqe4

I report part of it below.

The root *ar- dates back to the Greek verb ararískō, “to connect / to tune”. The same root is present in the Greek noun hárma, “chariot”, and in Latin nouns such as artus “limb”, ars “art”, arma “weapons” and even armentum “livestock”. Also, the Modern English noun arm (Arm in German) has the same origin. They are all cases of words designating material and concrete objects. The chariot is made of wooden planks that are “wedged and joined” together. The limb is connected to the body by an “articulation” etc. Indeed, the original meaning of harmonía stays close to this semantic area as well. It is with nails and harmoníēsin, “joints”, that Ulysses builds his raft to escape the island of Ogygia and Calypso. From carpentry and woodwork terminology, we then move to medical terminology, where harmonía can mean “articulation, joint” or “suture”.

I stop here. It can become an endless journey.

We start in a circle, happy to see each other again. The hugs are powerful, and warm, as are the looks. Carlo asks what resonated in the body after the first three days of work. He explains the name of his company, C&C, which has nothing to do with Carlo and Chiara – its founders – but the two Cs stand for “corpo” (body) and “cultura” (culture).

If last time I didn’t know very well what my role would be, how to be inside and outside, today I am already inside, witness, presence. It’s a nice sensation of participation, fusion, and ensemble.

Luca felt mentally open and physically tired. To him, it felt like the work he did after was assimilated quickly. The first part of the work helped him forgive certain steps. He experienced positive detachment.

Viola experienced the echo of a sensation of safety. She felt concrete fragility, a part of her child self she rarely takes by the hand, as if adult Viola had caressed the child version of herself to forgive and accept her shortcomings.

Nadja had thought of three things but – having heard the others – she only says two. Her way of looking at other people has changed, she feels what others are going through, even what you cannot see but only perceive, and notices how personal and at the same time impersonal experiencing life is. Everyone experiences a sense of lack, for example.

The Non-Self, An-Atman, comes to mind, meaning – as Zen philosophy says – that there isn’t a Self that is separate from the elements which constitute it. The Self is an illusion, the ego.

What resonated in Flavio was balance. He has felt aligned on his axis and has noticed that his supporting leg, after many years, is changing. He cannot bring himself to talk about forgiveness because he is a Cancer, but he has felt a sense of flow.

For Lisa it was like swimming in cold and clean water, her sensations amplified to a thousand. She says that it is tough to talk about herself and she always runs away. There are drawers which are difficult to open. Many things resonated in everyday life and made her feel close to other people’s stories. In her body, she felt her torso and feet a lot.

Carlo asks me the same question. I experienced immense gratitude and a generous nakedness from the others, while I was protected by my notebook. In the following days, I felt a lot of energy and my antennae, which detect other people’s sensations and emotions, became much more active. The work on the 13 tasks reminded me of the 36 questions to fall in love in 45 minutes selected by psychologist Arthur Aron as a social experiment. Here they are: https://www.agi.it/lifestyle/test_innamoramento_domande-2069937/news/2017-08-19/

When you open up, reveal your intimate self and are vulnerable, when you have removed your shells, then you feel that you are not separate. We are in a shared human condition, we are beings who have something they don’t want and, on the other hand, lack something they desire.

Carlo says that it was very strange for him to receive so much, to have that much energy and not be able to express it. Just like me, we were both spectators of a process happening among bodies – with answers, questions, and intersections – where, however, the expressive component was missing.

Viola remarks how strange the time during the last encounter was. Slow, fast. Then there was that Sunday afternoon when we were running around in a rush to get to the station in time to catch the train, with Flavio fetching Carlo’s backpack for him like in a video game.

Now it’s time to watch young Luca play the shy lion in the Wizard of Oz. Amazing. Then, we watch Lisa play Dorothy and Viola, with very long hair, dance on TV. But she is already too old here, that dance class at the seaside when she was 16 and dressed like Jane Fonda – a black leotard with colourful shorts over it – is better.

Now we need to resume the work on the physical material, “put the pieces back together”, explains Carlo. We need to process the material that was collected, and the physical tasks, to create a sequence and a group action.

Each dancer’s story must become 5 minutes of movement. There is the need to “thin out and condense” says Carlo. In this phase, there aren’t any spoken parts, only movement.

Thinning out means subtracting energetic presence, not “moving in slow-motion or being rarefied, but subtracting the here and now of the action. Like a hologram, empty”.

The search for similarities, intersections, and coincidences will come later and there will be the addition of a glitch effect in the body – the flickering in the old video materials, that stumbling block, imperfection, discrepancy – and of a rewind effect, which doesn’t mean just repeating an action backwards, but directing the weight and projecting it forward.

Carlo asks to be technical and not to fall into sentimentalism.

To this, he adds looks, which are not a halt but a suspension to stop the action and look at the audience, without indulging in it. A suspension that slips into something else, without turning off the body. Subtracting material and not energy. Subtraction and suspension of the gaze.

The look is like saying to the spectator: “Are you following me? Did you understand? Can I go on with the story?”.

Carlo and I are struck by how, in the pictures of them as toddlers, kids, and teenagers, their present self is already there as if the seed of dance were already whole and ready to bloom. As if it already contained everything even when it was just a seed. You can see what Hillman, in “The Soul’s Code”, calls the daimon. He talks about the acorn, the demon that guides us and moves our vocations, our destinies. Hillman says that it comes like an epiphany when we are little, and we light up and say: “Here’s what I want to be when I grow up”. That’s the acorn.

Each person has two videos of them executing their piece from yesterday and works on cutting it down to 5 minutes. Flavio sets his phone as an enormous clock, Luca writes, and the three girls rehearse each in their corner.

It’s incredible how the relationship with dance has changed thanks to technology. How did people rewatch sequences to decide what worked and what didn’t when there were no videos? And how did they build a memory, a repertoire of the most ephemeral art of all, an art that exists only in its creation and dissolution, that develops in space like architecture and in time like music but inhabits the ‘becoming’ and not the ‘being’? Dance doesn’t exist if it is not embodied, if it doesn’t inhabit the bodies that enact it.

Thirty years ago, in 1993, I wrote my thesis on “Die Klage der Kaiserin”, the movie Pina Bausch directed in 1989. When I was doing my Erasmus programme in Wuppertal (actually, I lived in Essen), Pina let me watch the videos of the shows recorded on VHS, but she said they were only a work tool, she wasn’t proud of them. I used to take the train from Essen to the first station in Wuppertal. From there, I would take the Schwebebahn – the suspended tramline on the Wupper River – although it would have been wiser to get off one station later. I would cross the city from above, hanging, dangling, and arrive at the Lichtburg – where they were rehearsing Blaubart – and sneak into a tiny room to watch the videos of old shows.

The five interpreters piece together their 5 minutes. And it’s magic. Viola falls the precise instant Flavio gets up, Nadja’s arm goes over Luca’s head and brushes against him. Lisa and Flavio run, and it looks like they are chasing each other. Lisa slaps her hands on her thighs and it’s as if from that comes a wave, which propagates, reaches the floor, and then comes back. Eyes meet, Viola and Lisa simultaneously put one arm in the air and the other behind the back, like flamenco dancers. Luca clicks his tongue and then Nadja changes shape, reaching towards the sky.

The new task is to add the GLITCH, a little shiver, a flicker, a mismatch in the body reminiscent of the imperfections in old videos.

Once more, I go back to etymology. The English word ‘glitch’ is thought to derive from the German term glitschen (to slide) and the Yiddish term gletshn (to slide, to skate).

Carlo explains: “A disruption that doesn’t become a breakdown. It’s a simple, light distortion, it doesn’t stop the action. Like a little electric shock that makes the head move as well. It’s neither downward (making the earth tremble), nor upward but it is horizontal”.

We try in pairs, me included since there are 5 of them. I have to touch Luca while he is doing his sequence and, from the touch, the shock, which is not a wave, will start. I try to touch different points – shoulder, head, knee, foot, elbow – to see what changes in the body. It’s very nice to also be doing things in addition to watching them. There’s time to write.

“Shall we infect each other in a circle?” Carlo invites everyone to stand in a circle to let the shocks spread.

Then, everybody starts again with their sequence and when Carlo claps his hands, the glitch comes.

Just like there have been 5 minutes of narration through the body, there will be 5 minutes of narration through words. Always taking the 13 tasks as a starting point, each dancer creates their piece, also including pauses, maybe a change in position, or an interaction with the spectator. They are going to be recorded. “They must include informality and spontaneity. – explains Carlo – It is not about sharing one’s own business, but creating intimacy as a modality that generates a gap between the hyper-technologic situation and physical presence”.

It’s going to work like this. The spectators will have their backs turned, the dancers will be facing front. The spectators will wear headsets through which they’ll see the dancers as kids and then enter a white space where there will be objects like the toy horse or the elephant. At the end, the dancer will take the spectator by the hand. It’s a situation of humanity, but alienating. The headsets will come off and there will be the simultaneous composition for 5 scores.

Carlo works with each dancer individually. The pieces haven’t changed but they’ve improved. It’s as if Carlo were doing some editing. Here he adds a comma, there he adds a change in the tempo, and here a pause. If the feet open three times with the same music, then it becomes o-ne, two-three. A gesture becomes bigger, another faster, an arm becomes softer, and a turn arrives without preparation. And so, the sequence is always the same but it’s as if it had more life, as if it told a story, as if Carlo had breathed some air into it, given it a colour, a different life. It’s amazing how small changes immediately enter the system, the body, the memory.

During the morning, while I wasn’t there, they worked on the REWIND, which doesn’t consist of simply reversing the movement but changing the weight depending on the direction, projecting it. Carlo tried to explain it to me by walking and moving a bottle. I don’t know if I understood.

While Carlo works with the bodies, he asks me to work in the same way with the words. The dancers read their stories to me, and I do the same thing Carlo is doing. I look for a flow, a common element, something to start from. Putting your hands in someone else’s story is a delicate job. There’s intimacy, pieces of heart and guts. Every shift could cause damage or pain so, first and foremost, I listen. I put myself at their service. I don’t want to manipulate anything but be maieutical and help an already present seed to grow. It’s all about helping the seed to shine. When I feel that something could be connected to something else, I suggest the link. When something could be funny or moving, I try to assist in adding a small emphasis, underlining, and this while always listening to the music of the stories, their internal rhythm, and their pulsating life.

In general, I (gently) push everyone in the direction of concreteness, stimulation of the senses, images, smells, sensations, sounds, tastes, small episodes. Whatever might easily resonate within the listener.

To Luca, who has written everything on his phone, I suggest being more concrete, more “show, don’t tell”, because abstract statements sound a bit like “I want peace in the world”. They don’t mean anything. If, however, instead of the word “bullying” there is an image, an action – being shoved to the ground, for example -, everything changes, everything comes to life and acquires a colour.

Luca jokingly calls me “teacher”. I am glad I never became a teacher.

To Nadja, who has written many stories involving animals in her notebook, I suggest starting from there to make everything more cohesive and fluid. There are elephants, snails, cats, and those pigs on TV from when she got so scared at night when she was little. And then there’s dance, her aunt, and so much more.

To Lisa, who has written on paper as well, I propose adding a few beautiful images I remember from her story, such as the image of her as a kid playing by following the lines on the carpet or wearing her baby doll’s hat, taking Monopoly money, making a train out of chairs and leaving.

Viola has written two stories in her glittery notebook. The first one is a story which she says is off-topic, the second is more in line with the task. Both stories work, maybe the second one a bit more, but some images from the first one absolutely need to be included, like the image of her in the house at the seaside, standing on her dad’s feet and looking at the moon – which she calls “Moony” and which she would like to eat – and its silvery reflection in the water.

Flavio comes in with an iPad and keyboard. In this case as well, we fix things based on their sound and create links. There are laughter and tears, his being Neapolitan, him dancing with his big sister in the disco at the seaside. There’s the daimon right there.

He’s afraid there are too many I-my-me. But they’re personal stories, it’s all good.

The medium on which each person writes says a lot about them and their way of working, jotting down, re-doing, deleting, and modifying. Here I am with my orange notebook with a metallic spiral. I will need the computer later, at home.

Personal stories, universal emotions. We’ve all felt that lack, that joy, that anger, that magic, that melancholy, that loss, that regret. It’s the shared human condition. We are all one. I am you and you are me, I relive myself through your story.

Each dancer chooses a partner to read their stories to in 5 minutes. Hearing them again is very exciting for me. The words I previewed, on which we worked together, have seeped in and have caused small transformations like touches of colour, sounds, and rhythms. I recognise them, although they have changed. The words are the same, the stories are the same but there’s a different music, flow, pulsation.

I feel inundated by warmth and gratitude, something subtle but powerful.

I now understand what people whose job is to take care of words and which I have always rejected – press office, editors – must feel. I have always wanted to be on the side of those who get pampered and not those who do the pampering. However, there is something beautiful in taking yourself out to help others blossom as well.

It’s time to put everybody’s 5-minute dance together to keep the possibilities of interaction open. Carlo sets the chairs. Five spectators in a circle, like the points of a star. Inside the circle is a collective rite of 5 stories, changes in direction, looks at each dancer’s spectator, and pauses. It’s going to be a circular space. I switch places and watch from all five points of view. There are magic tricks and auditory or visual rendezvous. After a roll, Flavio’s fall triggers a reaction. Luca throws himself forward on his hands. Lisa, who’s on her knees, raises her hands. Nadja walks and gets lower by stepping her feet progressively wider. The earth shakes, there’s a snap, Luca passes under. Viola passes outside and Lisa inside.

The names of the things that happen are silly. Tanguero, earthquake, dog, fall. But we all understand what he refers to when Carlo says: “Let’s go again from the dog”.

From outside, it feels like watching fish in a fishbowl. They are strange creatures capable of darting, resting on the bottom, turning into other animals, or maybe into plants and seaweed. And then, there are elephants, birds with incredibly long legs, stilt walkers, a fox, a dog, maybe some hedgehogs, a snail. At times, I see parts of a cartoon. At others, I see gears as in a Burton watch. But the winning sensation is that of an organism composed of multiple parts. It’s a privilege to be able to witness it all, to see it grow, and take shape. Being there. Witness, presence.

It’s raining. It hadn’t rained in a long time. It’s a special day, it’s Labour Day. It’s Monday. We are happy to meet, maybe we are all a bit tired. But we are here. May has always been a busy, dense month. Things start to come to a close, you can feel the summer air, and hear the first swallows. It’s been like this since my school days.

And then the rain, a blessing, a pleasure, beautiful, powerful. Who would have thought?

We start in a circle. Carlo lays out the filming schedule for the end of May and the beginning of June. The five places that were chosen will become one, probably the woods, a forest, somewhere in nature.

Now it’s about adding circularity and sensoriality to the pieces. It will be possible to touch things, smell them, to visualise real and imaginary – like the elephant – objects.

The video will open with the eye of the dancer.

Luis Buñuel’s “Un chien andalou” (1929) comes to mind. Going beyond reality through surrealism and violence to shake the minds of the dormant bourgeois.

What also comes to mind is the eye popping out of the Bride’s head in Tim Burton’s “The Corpse Bride”, a movie which I really love.

“Being with us has to feel nice” says Carlo at one point. This is to underline that text and movement must create dynamics of engagement, they must be personal and captivating.

Everyone writes in their notebooks. There are some dense moments when it feels like we are in a study room before an exam.

We will create the virtual without the virtual.

“I have a memory, turn around” to induce the spectator to do things. In the video, it will be possible to appear, disappear, and alter oneself.

To sum-up:

1) videos as children

2) spoken video

3) danced video + details

4) the headsets come off and there is the common choreography section

We all position ourselves in the centre. We follow Luca while he is doing his part and Carlo records with his phone while turning on the spot. We hide from the camera by turning with him. It’s like a game, a bit like hide and seek and the game of sardine. Then, we understand that we can all stay seated while Carlo stands and turns. This works better. Lisa miscalculates the distances and bumps into Flavio’s foot while turning. We all laugh.

I have collected a few ideas from the various stories. This is what they have become:

Versatile Almanac / Portable Bestiary

I would like to eat the trail

Of the moon on the water

Darkness, and fresh grass,

Pink pigs on the sofa

Little girls at the barre:

Slippers, pink tights, and sleek buns.

Jazz pants and black leg warmers

Water, wind, breath,

Feet, hands, details,

Shrinking and multiplying

Expanding

To always stay small,

The smell of the sea

The vacuum cleaner

The perfume of a freshly baked cake

Strawberry jam

I give you a note in a small bottle:

My dream is inside it,

Disco lights

A train made out of chairs

Whitney Houston’s CD

Swimming naked in the sea,

A freshly cut kiwi

Dancing while standing on Dad’s feet

The scent of laundry hanging in the sun

The Margherita chair

Mums and aunts, dads

The tickling of a feather on the hand

Frrr frrrr frrr frrrr

Scissors sliding and cutting fabric

I lift your foot to make you feel

Does the earth ever disappear from under you?

I would like to be an elephant,

Although I look like a giraffe

Horses, snails, lizards

Rabbits making little rabbits

Hedgehogs and many turtledoves

Chico the cat and Arcibaldo the dog

An origami fox that may be a grandma

Each dancer will work on their storyboard, adding 4 images, 4 sounds, 2 smells, and 2 moments of touch to the script. Then, maybe, everything will change…

Today we work on the solos oriented in space. The danced video starts on one side and ends on the opposite side, the spoken video starts where it ends.

The first touch with the spectator has to be delicate to avoid startling them.

In the afternoon, Carlo isn’t here but the company has homework to do. They have to create a file and split it into two columns, like the script of a screenplay. In the left column, there’s the text – which will be memorised and recited in the video – and in the right column, there are the effects.

We define the colours:

RED for the visual effects with an object (for example the elephant, carpet, house)

ORANGE for the visual effects without an object (darkness, shrinking, magnifying, multiplying)

BLUE for sounds

GREEN for touch without objects (touching a leg, caressing, tapping a shoulder)

VIOLET for concrete objects (the photo on the Margherita chair to give the spectator, a perfume to smell, drops of water to drip on a hand).

In the meantime, we rehearse with last year’s music. Some points are perfect, watery. Some evoke the sound of bells and the jungle, others are industrial and metallic.

Lunch break around the big table. Viola eats carrots out of a packet, Lisa has 2 boiled eggs, and Nadja has a tupperware made out of glass with a mysterious content. Flavio eats rice with vegetables, and I have quinoa with asparagine. Luca is somewhere else.

In the afternoon, the table where we ate turns into a study room. There is a debate on how to create the columns. There are those with a laptop, those with an iPad, and those with an iPhone. Some need help, others don’t.

There are different inclinations. We all are better at something and worse at something else.

Flavio and Luca are really into virtual reality, they take advantage of the opportunities, think that way, and create that way.

I don’t understand it and struggle to imagine. In the Nineties, those colourful posters with repeating patterns were in trend. You had to focus on a point, blur your gaze, and then something was supposed to appear. I never saw the dinosaurs everyone was seeing.

Luca says I am poetic. I simply think that I don’t understand it, that I am from another tribe. Or I just don’t speak that language. I don’t know.

Lisa is also a bit like me. What we can and cannot do remains a mystery to us. We must be poetic.

In this sort of study room, we were saying, people colour, debate, create columns, assign colours, laugh, and try to stay. We rehearse the length of the text while imagining the actions.

The texts still have parts that don’t flow, tongue twisters, and things that need to be cut. It’s a difficult task, long, one of precision, of patience. It’s very different from writing for a newspaper. There, you immediately search for the sound of a word, you create it, adapt it, and let it go. Here, you go back over things again and again.

In Viola’s text, there is “the back of the world” and a drawing in the style of the Little Prince where the world is small and the child is big.

It reminds me of the poem on sensations by Alda Merini that I always read after meditating.

I Like the Verb ‘to Sense’ *

I like the verb ‘to sense’…

To hear the sound of the sea,

To smell its smell.

To hear the sound of rain

Wetting your lips,

To hear a pen tracing

Feelings over a blank paper.

To smell the scent of the people you love,

To hear their voice

And to feel it with the heart.

To feel is the verb of emotions,

You lay on the back of the world

And you sense…

Alda Merini

*[Translator’s note: the original title is “Mi piace il verbo sentire”. In Italian, the verb sentire is a general verb that combines the five senses and, therefore, contains the meanings of hearing, smelling, and feeling. The English equivalent of the verb sentire is ‘to sense’]

Today I got there in the afternoon, while Carlo and Viola were checking out the Cafè Müller Theatre. I feel a bit like the substitute teacher. Luca calls me “teacher”.

I like this listener role.

For me, all the stories have a title. It’s the name of the people, the animals, or the personified objects that appear in the stories. There’s “Sergio” for Lisa’s, “Anna” for Flavio’s, “Moony” for Viola’s, “Uta” for Nadja’s, and “Nina” for Luca’s.

I imagine Uta taking Nina, who wants to eat Moony, by the hand while Anna and Sergio dance a waltz embraced and barefoot on the terrace at the seaside.

Besides in Flavio’s, in almost all the stories there are animals. In some stories, there is more than one. Lizard and horses for Lisa, although she doesn’t understand the latter. An elephant, giraffes, pink pigs on TV, snails, rabbits making little rabbits, a dog, and Chico the cat for Nadja. Archibaldo the dog, hedgehogs running away in the garden, and many turtledoves for Viola. A tattooed origami fox for Luca.

In all the stories children are doing extraordinary things and all, truly all of them, are dancing. There are those who try on point shoes at home and make their feet bleed without feeling pain (Viola), those who wear jazz pants and awful leg warmers (Luca), those who want to skip the terrible propaedeutic and immediately move to ballet (Nadja), those who are torn between singing and dancing, try copying Whitney Houston, and then opt for dance (Lisa), and those who stand out on the dance-floor of the disco in a summer village, following their big sister (Flavio).

Parents and teachers who tried to discourage them or minimise their talent when they were little, look at what they have become. Generous, present, careful, imaginative, collaborative, precious, brave, authentic, open, the perfect mix of strength and vulnerability, a blend of technique and emotion, muscles and heart. BTT!

Parents and teachers who tried to discourage whoever danced in the living room, painted on walls, sang along to the TV, wrote poems in the maths notebook, walked upside-down, played the piano, the oboe, or the fruit box, made sand or stone castles, baked cakes with flour puffs all around, cut the edges of the curtains to make doll dresses, put elastic bands across chairs to do the high jump, that’s where the daimon Hillmann talks about is. That’s where the acorn is. Look at it, recognise it, let it grow, let it bloom. That’s the way, help it happen.

At the practical level, we are all in the centre and one dancer goes around us. We all suggest actions or sensorial moments. I feel that some parts from the stories are penetrating inside me like small needles, others are sticking to my skin like post-it notes, and others still are reverberating like little waves caressing the antennae. Tomorrow it will all be different.

Remember to practice articulating words well. Stick a pen horizontally between your teeth and bite on it, then articulate and make yourself intelligible.

Learn a tongue twister. For me the most difficult one in Italian is: “Ti ci stizzisci tu e stizziscitici pure”.

Viola and Carlo report the results of the theatre visit and of the meeting with the people who will take care of the video element.

In the photo studio, we will have 4 metres of space, so the big movements we imagined will have to be reduced and adapted.

It won’t be possible to stay in front of the objects but only beside them. So, to be clear, on one side of the elephant.

Making things smaller, bigger, appear, disappear, or multiply is not a problem. It can all be done.

Real objects are welcome.

Carlo decides to make things easier and cut the events of the stories down to 5. There will be 5 pictures. The spoken part with the 5 pictures cannot be longer than 3 minutes. It will be possible to start from different levels, for example from sitting on the floor.

In order not to lose details through the headsets, the horse is better than the lizard.

Dance in a video.

The details will be in the whiteness as if it were a photographic exhibition of the performance.

We meet Max Viale, the musician who composed the music last year.

He highlights some issues of reusing part of an already-composed musical score. He says that the concepts are different. The audio must be put in the space, the sound must follow the tracking of the head. It’s not like at the cinema where we stay still.

Will the sound technician manage the sound live?

The synchronisation with the technical team can’t be done in a second moment.

The speakers of the virtual reality headset, the Oculus (such a great name! Latin and future, Latin is the future), are terrible.

Four spectators in space have a different perception, there are 4 corners. 5 people change all perspectives. Storytelling and sound equalisation, words and sounds that tell stories, like griots under a mango tree. Fairy tales in the woods to chase away fear, storytellers in the Matrix.

We continue working on the stories and the spoken part, cutting the words down to 2 and a half minutes. There are still things to fix, passages that are hard to pronounce, like “essere parte dell’essenza mi fa essere”, or aren’t visual, sensorial, or tactile enough, like “the people who helped me are my grandma and my mum”. Isn’t it better to say “My mum and grandma helped me”? Nonetheless, things escape our notice. Cacophonies, a drawl, conflicting syllables.

I listen, and we time the stories. I enjoy listening, making suggestions, letting things emerge.

I would love to have a tutor-editor-friendly ear that did the same for me, even now. Always.

I wonder if, at this point, it wouldn’t be easier to redo everything from scratch instead of reworking the existing texts by cutting, refining, and fixing them. Maybe it would be easier to take a blank piece of paper, forget the words that were put down on paper and which we easily hold on to, and let the right words emerge one by one, a bit like raisins surfacing in a bowl of muesli.

La Mandria Regional Park. Filming in nature. I can’t be present today, but I look at the rain and think about how we humans – who always delude ourselves into thinking we control everything – never have any control over anything.

Rain is democratic, it falls on everything and everyone. It is not concerned with plans and projects. It simply falls. A lot, a little, too much, too little, rain doesn’t care and keeps falling, doing its thing according to its nature. It pours, buckets down, it rains cats and dogs, it hails, there’s a storm, it drizzles, it bursts, it sprinkles, and it stops. Rain falls and you can’t do anything but get wet or find some form of shelter. Rain wins anyway.

The rendezvous to go back to the Mandria Regional Park is in front of Viola’s house at 8.10 am. Carlo and Viola are there, then Matteo Maffesanti, with all his equipment, and Lisa arrive. Lisa is looking for a pharmacy, she ran out of allergy medicine and being surrounded by plants might be a problem for someone with hay fever.

Since we have never met, Viola makes the introductions between Matteo and me. She makes beautiful introductions full of praises masterfully inserted between pieces of information. I learn that, among the many others, one of Matteo’s activities – the Elevator Bunker collective –is centred around theatre projects and intellectual disability. It’s a very interesting theme, just like rowing with the para-rowing guys. I’ll do some further research on what they do.

The crew – Davide Borra with two other operators – is already onsite. There is also the photographer Andrea Macchia. We find out that we know each other even if we have never met. I see his photos and he reads my articles, but we were faceless names.

It was raining until yesterday and here, where we will be shooting, on a carpet of dry leaves, it smells of mushrooms, moss, and wet earth. We set up the 360° camera.

The dancers are in costume. Bordeaux faux leather with some details, a bow, a necktie, a handkerchief, plus a bronze top, and trousers. They go well with the green of the trees and the colour of dry leaves. The costumes are all different but have an element of elegance, especially jackets like Luca’s – a fabric jacket with a mandarin collar – and Lisa’s short jacket. As for the shoes, they are not trainers but Dr. Martens, loafers, boots.

The ground is uneven and there are holes. The crew try to find the perfect spot for the camera. In the meantime, the costumes are getting a touch-up. Tighten here, secure there, thread and needle in hand.

We start a game with Luca. We begin with the word ‘un-even’ and, for the whole day, we will say words starting with un- as they come. Uneasiness, unspoken, unacceptable, uneducated, unique, universe… The winner is the person who leaves the other without words, but no one wins.

There can’t be anything in the way of the 360 because it captures everything. My job, then, is to stop people passing from here on foot, by bike, by car, running or on a walk. Andrea and Matteo will be on the other side, where we left the cars. I, on the other hand, am here where there is a fence, wet earth, and a few things to observe.

The first thing I observe is the restlessness in my mind, which is here and not where the action is. I don’t know how the shoot is going. If the ground is slippery and people fall, if Carlo is satisfied or not, or if the guys feel comfortable in what they are doing.

Carlo notifies us about when they start filming, and when we need to stop people, via the designated Whatsapp chat “Tiny Blocks”. I can kind of understand it also by the chatter or the silence, but when the “Stop” message arrives, I find myself stopping people. Some smile, thank me and say: “No problem, I will take the long way around”. When a cyclist is coming fast, I throw myself to stop them. The white cars of the park pass by and I ask them to stop. They wait.

We receive the “Stop” order and a couple has just passed by. The man is slower and stops. I text Carlo to let them pass before starting to shoot.

Between one “Stop” and a “Clear”, I observe the things around me. Sitting on the ground is uncomfortable since the earth is still very wet. I put my jumper on the ground. Two white butterflies are dancing, chasing each other, then resting somewhere. Two of them stay still with folded wings, so close they look like one. A third butterfly arrives.

I get up to stop a trio consisting of a girl in a nineteenth-century costume holding a parasol, a man wearing ordinary clothes and a cameraman. I say: “We are shooting as well”. “We are filming a soap opera” they answer. “We are filming dance in nature”.

I hear a noise like a little animal chewing among the leaves. A mouse? A squirrel? Some lizards are lying still in the sun, but they are not the ones chewing. Meanwhile, I observe the earth starting to dry. I breathe. My mind is now quiet. I no longer need to know what is going on there. Everything is here.

It’s break time.

Luca and Flavio have lunch where we left the backpacks, hidden behind a tree, and some eat at the café tables. La Mandria has some beautiful spaces. I didn’t remember the stables being so nice.

We chat between the sun and the shade.

Men on one side and women on the other. Shadow and sun.

I talk about India, I light up. In a month I will return to India for the first time in 8 years. Only India has such an effect on me. It gives me that sense of overflowing and disruptive life, of when everything becomes one, when the individual, the multitude and everything become small, minuscule, a flow, dancing particles and chaos, beauty. Your senses fill up, your heart expands, everything is more than enough and all at once.

I go back to my post. The smell of earth and mud seems different. A bee dances with a yellow flower, it rests on it and flies away. On the other side of the road, a leaf is dangling and swinging in the wind. It’s about to come off the branch, but it doesn’t give up. There’s an acorn on the ground. Are they really this small?

I stop other people. I can’t find the dangling leaf anymore. It was there just a minute ago.

Lisa is wearing a pair of Dr Martens in the same bordeaux as the costumes. Naturally ageing and worn-out leather is so uniquely beautiful. You can read stories on it just like you can read the wrinkles on a face. Time makes the leather of shoes full of history and stories. The wear, the rain and the sun, the steps, kisses, the sprints to catch a bus, the fading colours, the trip-ups, that time you took them off in a hurry because you had to undress quickly, that time you threw them far away in a moment of anger, and that time you stepped on grass, walked on snow, wandered around a city you didn’t know but immediately fell in love with.

We go from the green full of nuances and movement of the trees to the green screen – that compact and even limbo-like backdrop used for easily adding backgrounds, effects, and details later on.

Acting, using the voice, is super hard for everyone but for people who are used to expressing themselves through the body, it is an enormous challenge.

Now the thought-out, written, cut, fixed, reworded texts, which were heard many times and learnt by heart, sound a little fake.

Today, besides Davide there is also Enrico, plus Andrea and Matteo who will take care of their details.

When I arrive, Nadja, Lisa and Luca are there under the stunning arches of the Docks, under the studio. It’s like the before or after of a university exam, when people are revising, smoking, or relaxing. Lisa is the only one who has yet to shoot. Viola did it in the morning and said it was very hard. Flavio is shooting right now.

This morning, Viola asked me if I knew a blonde girl who could be Nina from Luca’s story. I sent a text in my building’s chat room and found a not super blonde, but very clever little girl. Then we find Celeste, a student from the school and from Lisa’s group, who is going to come here after school.

Carlo torments Flavio, who rushes and eats his words. “You are Neapolitan, not a puppet”, Carlo tells him. “An intimist Neapolitan”, adds Davide. Not all Neapolitans are outgoing, you know. My mind goes to the actor Troisi and all my Neapolitan friends.

Flavio talks about his mum and his living room. Carlo tells him not to die down, to welcome us into his home. And there’s the living room with the lamp, carpet, and armchair from the studio.

“Don’t get anxious, stay calm. You’ll see that life has a different taste”.

Anxiety makes you eat your words and not breathe properly.

Anxiety derives from “Ango”, to constrict. Anxiety crushes and squashes the throat, it doesn’t allow the voice to come out, to properly breathe in and out. In German, “Angst” means fear. Fear constricts as well.

Meanwhile, the atmosphere becomes playful. Carlo is in front of the camera and mimics the commercials for laxatives and medicine against diarrhoea and haemorrhoids. We make the situation lighter.

Favio tells of when he went to the disco with his sister when he was 5 years old. “Maybe it’s better not to read, but to tell the story – says Davide – as if you were talking to me, without thinking about it as a written text”.

When Flavio talks about erotic pleasure and flirting, he invites him to be more credible. “You don’t even believe it yourself”. He shoves him, shakes him, he symbolically kicks him in the butt. The mic falls. Flavio doesn’t react. After this, he is more convinced.

At the same time, I have to write 43 lines, 9 lines, and then 9 more for the newspaper La Stampa. I brought my laptop with me. I knew I had to work and I couldn’t say “I’m sorry, I can’t come” like I did yesterday. So, my dance on the keyboard follows the breaks and when I hear “camera, action!” I stop, reread a bit and listen to Flavio.

Meanwhile, Davide indicates what is good and what isn’t. “This one’s good. Let’s do another one as backup”.

God knows what I am writing amidst all of this. We will read it tomorrow.

Carlo has had a fever since yesterday, but he invites Lisa to try again. She is also eating her words and going very fast. Anxiety makes you go faster, as if by finishing faster you were safe. Maybe. She starts lying on the floor with her feet crossed. “I would like to be sound”. She stands up. The mic jumps when she jumps on the carpet. She plays with the fabric. She makes a train out of chairs. She looks up. New York’s skyscrapers, that’s where she left a piece of her heart.

It is difficult to bring out the voice and enthusiasm. To believe in what you are saying standing in front of a camera, while we are all sitting here. Nadja places herself under the camera. Her presence is encouraging. “We should all have a Nadja listening to us”, says Carlo. Yes. We should all have a Nadja in our lives.

Viola announces that Celeste has arrived. She is the little girl who will play Nina from Luca’s story. But she is as tall as Lisa. She has brought with her a few outfits her mum gave her. The winner is a pink chenille tracksuit with long sleeves and shorts, and trainers. My colourful backpack with notebook and pencil cases becomes part of the set. Luca repeats the part about Nina, who “one day stopped coming to school”. Carlo tells Celeste what to do: “Look at the big notebook, put it inside, open the small one, put it inside, then the pencil case. Close the backpack, stand up, put it on your back, and walk away”. We try looking in different directions, towards Nadja – who is waiting on one side – and towards Lisa – who is near the camera. “Don’t look at the floor” says Carlo. Celeste does everything. We are done.

We take everything down and leave. Tomorrow, Carlo and Viola will go to the studio to do the beginning of the editing with Davide. If everything goes to plan, the call time for everyone else is at 2.30 pm.

Then, on the chat, we get the message “You will have tomorrow off”. Good. Everybody needs it. It’s been three intense and challenging days.

And I will be able to write those lines without rushing and juggling multiple commitments. To welcome them as they come, let them breathe, make them settle down on the page. Like the forest taking in that dangling leaf.

Morning at BTT. Carlo is not here, but Davide arrives with the headsets. They look a bit like snorkel masks, a bit like small bathtubs, and a bit like equipment from old science-fiction movies.

They look nice, they have an organic shape, a little animal-like, a strange creature between a fish and an insect.

They are heavy and, when you wear them, they push down on your cheeks, even if you tighten them around your head using the velcro strap and regulate them to fit your head size.

We try the experience but we need to go out in the corridor for everyone to have an internet connection.

The dancers are all in a line. I take some funny pictures.

It’s my turn to try. I start the experience with Lisa, whom I hear only from the left, and then with Viola, whom I hear only from the right. There are still things to fix, like audio synchronisations and technical stuff, which I don’t understand at all.

The experience in nature is really powerful. The light filtering from the trees makes the green shine and the colour of the leaves on the ground perfectly matches the bordeaux of the costumes. Birds, crumpled leaves, movement, breaths. The sounds are enveloping. Up until this point, I couldn’t understand them but now they also feel very organic.

It’s nice to follow the voice of the person, to look for it in the space of the headsets, to turn around. It makes you a little dizzy. I feel for the skirting board with my foot in order not to lose contact with the earth and the sense of direction. It will become the anchor I will return to when I feel lost after moving in circles and turning in all directions.

The details are beautiful. They fluctuate in a white space that reminds me of the room at the beginning of the video but also makes me lose my points of reference a bit, because white creates a vacuum effect, a stepping out of the known.

Matteo’s video is really powerful. He established links between the movements of the dancers in nature, a different vision, and an original point of view. I find the flickering moment very moving. It’s like an electric shock passing from one person to the next, coming back and then spreading to the leaves and the air. Everything vibrates, pulsates, is alive.

We move to the Café Müller theatre in Via Sacchi. While on the way, I walk, make a phone call, and savour the first shaken iced coffee of the year.

On the street, I find an abandoned elephant with rainbow legs. I think of all the lost stuffed toys, the tears of those who can’t find them anymore. I think of the life of the objects that have been in the hands and in the eyes of those who cherished them.

We go underground. The space is enveloping and damp, reminiscent of a cave and a magical lair. It’s perfect for making everything possible.

We try the lights, five points illuminated by spotlights. Where is the centre? Why are these two points closer? We measure, subvert everything, call Carlo, move things closer or more distant, we put marks on the floor.

The soft balconies on the two sides force us to approach the space differently. We are underground and humidity sneaks its way in.

The group rehearses. The floor is harder than in the studio, the sounds are dull, and they say it hurts more when you fall. The light on black changes everything: perception, emotions, and spaces.

I will be in the diary room. Matteo’s video will be playing and, on the steps of the former gallery of the theatre, there will be the diaries of all the dancers, each with a dedicated station to sit and read with a few objects, a lamp, a seat to stay and keep living the experience.

I will arrive after the tango recital. I did everything I could to have our little beginner performance happen before all the kids and folk dances so that I could run here.

Everything all at once. In life, things converge as if elastics were stretching the events over time, then you let go on one side and everything concentrates, and the coordinates and points of reference change. I like this sensation. It’s full of possibilities.

I will stay here and find a balance between being a discreet but available presence. A bit like a talking diary on demand, a bit shadow, a bit guide, who knows.

Technology is amazing, but it’s extremely sensitive. Davide tries on the headsets time and time again. They are sensitive to light, to lighting, and to the environment.

Today, our sound technician Luca Martone and lighting designer Ermanno Marini are here as well.

Everyone moves and goes around in the black space. They look like industrious fish in a bowl.

I trust bodies made of bones, muscles, and skin more.

I try Nadja’s experience, which has become great. There are a couple of intense and surprising additions that I hadn’t experienced before. I won’t say anything so as not to spoil the effect.

The headset runs out of battery and turns off, so I miss the transition from virtual to reality.

And there they are, dancing in the space with music. Carlo is right: “The music swallows the bodies”. Meaning that the music is beautiful, intense, and full, but it covers the falls on the cement – which absorbs sound -, it swallows everything, and the dancers seem to become too small.

The drums are too dramatic for Carlo.

I think that music, somehow, always wins. Like when you try not to walk to the beat and, instead, music calls you and you go with it.

Viola, Flavio, and Luca say that, when it’s time for the details, the music is nice and surprising the first time, but then it shouldn’t stay the same because it becomes predictable.

I agree.

The muttering and buzz getting louder and covering everything at the end bothers me. I couldn’t hear Nadja’s live voice.

Luca will work on these aspects.

In the meantime, we place the lamps, diaries, and objects in the room where I’ll be, the former audience. It’s a cosy space where you can stay for a while.

Stay is a great word. I associate it with “knowing how to stay”, meaning I am able to stay with what’s there, to take the time to come face to face with things as they are.

I wonder how tomorrow and the day after tomorrow’s partakers (this is what we can call the spectators) will stay.

We record the sounds to add them to the music. The hand on Viola’s forearm, Flavio’s fall, Luca’s snap, Lisa’s clap, the drumming of hands on Nadja’s belly.

And then air, outside the damp lair, the whale’s belly.

Hunger for light and air.

Air and warmth, sun.

Pizza and various foods nearby.

Then back inside, where the air is water.

Davide and three technicians are wearing the headsets and trying to fine-tune everything.

The way humans move while wearing a headset is funny. Whether dancers or technicians, they look like toddlers learning to walk. Some wobble, some are cautious, and others look comfortable, or move in slow motion like an astronaut in space with no gravity. But they also look like strange, wary, unbalanced animals – a bit like moles, insects, little monkeys.

I ask myself how I am going to write about Tiny in La Stampa tomorrow. I find myself in a bit of a conflict of interest between inside and outside. Unless I write about things from my privileged viewpoint, like when I follow the behind-the-scenes of shows, rehearsals, or other things. And it’s one of my favourite things to do in the world.

I can do that.

Hurray.

But isn’t writing about something you are involved in much more difficult to do? It would be easier to ask a couple of questions to Carlo without knowing anything, but I am not in such a position.

So, I write after the rehearsals.

Let’s hope that no bad news will take away our space on the page last minute.

And then the diary, these words. Will they be the last?

I saved the file of the last part of the work as “LastpartTiny”. I have stopped giving the files creative titles – like the copywriter I was – because then I couldn’t find them when I looked for them. So, the titles are straightforward. I thought the name was going to be “last part”, but it won’t. Like when you add “Ok” to a file name, and then “Ok2”, “Ok3”, “Okok”, “Okwiththedate”.

It won’t be the last part because we are in the performance and the diary is also part of the performance experience. Besides the headsets and the live experience, there is another layer. There is the room with the different stations and each of the dancers’ diaries, plus the dramaturgical diary and – even more performative – my presence as a “living and talking diary” for whoever wishes. It’s like the Human Library Project, where people tell their life story and their experiences in person. But there is still another layer. I will be there writing in the moments when the room will be empty and I won’t have anyone to welcome.

It’s a sort of mise en abyme, placement into the abyss. You know, like when a picture contains a smaller picture. Or there’s the dream inside the dream at the cinema.

It won’t be the last part because I think I’ve found out what I want to be when I grow up, even though I already knew it. I want to live and tell what I’ve experienced. I want to meet people and connect with the part of them I resonate with, just like I do with my reports since India, from a position halfway between participant observation and memoir. The diary becomes the point of contact between what I see and what I experience. It becomes the window on an inner landscape teeming with emotions, a leap towards the future, a seed of presence containing the memory of what was and will be – which we can’t yet see but is already here.

It won’t be the last part because this thing continues under the skin, in dreams, in feeling the connection with everybody. How can I think of never going back to Via Cigna again? It’s not possible. Is it attachment, or is it a healthy connection which is hard to let go of and allow to turn into something different?

The morning starts with me rowing on the river in an 8, where everybody has to row together otherwise the boat leans on one side. Even if it might not seem like it, for me this is relevant to the diary because rowing is a dance and it connects me to the water, to nature, and to the animals populating the Po River. In the hangar, a swallow is bringing food to its hatchlings and the two geese aren’t on their usual log. Then, there are coots, grebes, ducks, and trees that have fallen because of storms.

Actually, before the rowing, the morning started with me flipping through the pages of La Stampa and seeing that the article about Tiny I wrote yesterday after the rehearsals in a hurry wasn’t published. They told me it will come out tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

There are rehearsals in the afternoon. The girls – all wearing black – who will remove the headsets and assist the audience will be there as well. At some point, I leave to go to the tango recital. I go from one theatre to another, from professional dancers to kids, boys, men and women doing folk dances. This might seem irrelevant as well but it’s not, because I have been learning the tango only for a few months, because the music starts before it’s supposed to, because the stage is raked and I always feel in danger when I am wearing heels, and because it’s all about listening to what is happening instant by instant.

I’m back in the theatre with the BTT guys, the technicians, everybody. I stay in my tango dress and just change shoes. I would like to be downstairs to experience what the others experience. I stay there for as long as I can, even for the little vocal warm-up and the “toi, toi, toi”.

Then, I go upstairs with Carlo to welcome the first 5 spectators. Carlo refers to me as a journalist and then as a girl, which is a bit weird considering my age but much more intimate and nicer. I am the “diary girl”.

From the gallery, I can hear the music and more or less know what is happening. In the meantime, I light an incense stick to get rid of the damp smell and give the feeling of home.

The first 5 spectators enter the room, explore, and watch the video. Someone asks questions, someone opens Viola’s drawer containing letters, someone plays with my Tibetan bell, opens the backpack I left near my station, and finds my tango shoes.

Then, the next spectators arrive, followed by others. They cry and if not, they are moved. They read, go through the pages, stay, touch. They seem to be touching the objects with the same tenderness they wish they had been caressed with when they were little. The men go straight to the QR code, while the women read the diary of their dancer first and then move on to the other ones. This is in general.

Luca’s mum and sister are crying a lot. Those who read Flavio’s diary seem more amused.

In this room, there’s an almost religious density (I’m back in teacher mode. ‘Religion’ comes from re-legire, to gather things together). People approach the objects with ritual respect and even the way they sit on the steps is harmonious.

The dramaturgical diary is a long read. Many ask me whether it will be available for reading in the future. At the entrance (or exit) there is a guest book. Some write in it or leave a greeting, others walk by it and leave.

We were published in La Stampa today. I am happy. I am happy for having declared my being inside and outside and for being accepted, as an opportunity.

We arrive at 2.30 pm. We have rehearsals. The new girls in black try the experience. Davide synchronises everything, Luca checks the music, and Ermanno the lighting.

After the first 5 spectators finish reading the diaries, watching the video and changing stations, I chat with Arianna who, while reading the diary, had asked me what my educational background was. She is struggling with architecture because she feels like her artistic and creative side is withering. I went through the same in university. We talk about it. I almost feel a sense of responsibility.

Here’s a word I would like to dwell on:

R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y

Carlo’s responsibility in his work, of which I can feel the connection to and coherence with politics, agriculture, and ethics. BTT’s responsibility. Because it’s all connected: what we feed on, both in a physical and abstract sense, how we consume, what we tell on stage, in a newspaper, or through a headset. The artist has a responsibility to those who live the experience, who are young, or who have a disability. It’s the responsibility of even just looking into themselves and not being able to run away. It’s being there and the quality of staying.

In the second group of spectators, two young girls did Nadja and Lisa’s experiences. I guide them to the stations. Giada is holding the fabric in her hand and asks me if Lisa has worn that pair of jeans, if the cuts of fabric on the notebook are from the clothes of when she was little, why the scissors are so small and whether they cut or not. What’s surprising, and not surprising at all since we are vibrations and we resonate, is that her mum sells fabric. Giada is like a small Lisa.

The kid who followed Nadja’s story (insert name), and who’s holding a piglet, finds the same picture Nadja had shown her and gets emotional. She plays with the other piglets. In the diary, she writes that she isn’t scared of the dark. When Nadja had asked her, she had answered “No”.

The third group is hastier.

The fourth won’t leave. In all of this, I haven’t been able to go upstairs and welcome the spectators with Carlo. They read everything, look around, ask questions, want to know what happened and how we worked together. The same happens with the fifth and sixth groups. They move like small animals in an unfamiliar habitat – a habitat which, however, they have also known forever –, delicately and gracefully.

Some suggestions and feedback I gathered: some people would like to experience all five stories, some would like to be able to calmly read the dramaturgical diary to understand the process, some to participate in a dance and writing workshop for amateurs, some to be able to stay longer in the diary room to read everything, some would like more narration, some more interaction with the performers on stage, some more live dance.

It all also depends a lot on the moment you experience everything and on the kind of vibration and resonance that is created.

At dinner, Davide asks me why people get so emotional. I reply that between him and me there are only a few atoms of difference, a few molecules. I mean it. We resonate because your fear of abandonment, of detachment, the loss of love, of a loved animal, or a parent, a bullying incident, a favourite spot, the smell of your aunt’s cake, an unfulfilled dream, something we don’t want but have, all of this constitutes the shared human condition. It’s our essence as sentient and fragile creatures, and sometimes as a powerful presence on the planet, as a mystery of interconnections, interrelations, and interdependencies. And heartbeats. And blinks. And blobs of tears and joy. And leaps towards the sky and earth that absorbs us.