Purgatorio, awaiting Paradiso is a site-specific work realized during the preparatory research aimed at the production of "Paradiso".
The performance is an initiatory rite that makes the costume the metaphor of the self, and the dance the search for ecstasy.
It is conceived to be made anywhere, even outdoors, as in the case of its première in Torino Danza 2019. The installation consists of an aluminum cube with movable walls of two meters, transparent. The dancer must reach the inside of the cube through a gradual path, to then start an ecstatic dance on the notes of God Speed You Black Emperor.
The water-soluble dress, created by the designer Sandrine Philippe, covers the body of the dancer up to the apex of his journey, until a first immobility during which the ritual will begin: three women will pour water on the roof of the cube, perforated, leaving the costume to be solved. The dance ends with the emergence of icons through the body of the dancer; through ecstatic poses, taken from painting and sculpture, images by Bernini, Caravaggio or Botticelli resurface to disappear until a last icon, on which resounds the famous phrase that Beatrice addresses Dante in the XVIII canto of Paradise:
"Turn around and listen;
because heaven is not in my eyes "....
