C as Community Dance
Virgilio Sieni makes everybody dance. Children, adults, old people, blind persons, mothers with sons, wifes and husbands, entire families. He has been able to make his father dance as well.
What does this mean for him? What did sharing dance with his father mean for him?
«I don’t know if I make everybody dance but we try. As it is for many experiences, my thought goes to mothers and children, to make my father dance is a unique experience, connected to a unique family relationship. Something where movement takes place in an unexpected way compaired to a movement with other peers, it’s another thing. That’s what we spoke about before, talking about Archeology.»
Was your father a dancer too?
«No he wasn’t, he never danced. I involved him for the first time when he was eighty years old and he complained about it because I involved him too late.
My father worked in a grocery and previously in viticulture. I lived my childhood in countryside for the whole summer. I know what the countryside was: the vineyards, the olive trees, cypresses tree, the hills. I missed all these natural elements when I was in Japan, because they match with the my childhood memories, with a time of idleness. That’s it, I know what idleness was!
When we were children we were free, I remember, I savor it and the feeling of nostalgia comes back to me very strongly, because what I lived was strong, like smell, light, the quality of light. I remember so clearly those kind of moments, that light, that quality of light, that landscape, those voices. These things are not here anymore but I feel that they continue to nourish me. It’s not memory but Archeology. Something that I feel very real.
Therefore Archeology allows us to pass these things form one age to another. This is the answer related to my father. This year I danced with him in “Ossetto”, (literally the “small bone” the shorter version of “Osso”, literally the “bone”) since he wasn’t able to dance “Osso” anymore. “Ossetto” is based on constant variations of what he remembers. I wanted to know how he feels. “Osso”, dance and performance are my business, are my place, I like lull within it and live it with the persons who I care for.»
Tags: Biennale College Danza, Biennale Danza, Virgilio Sieni
