As Burri suggests, the Cretto is not intended for performances; it demands silence, serving as a meditative space that immerses us in history and brings past energy to the present with renewed vitality.
PARADISE NOW is a unique project that varies from place to place, promoting a way of inhabiting spaces and allowing varied experiences to coexist. Burri's Cretto hosts and inspires choreography for an ensemble of dancers and a community of citizens, who engage in a dialogue of thoughtful, breathing gestures. Together, dancers and citizens create a dynamic interplay of proximity and closeness, establishing a new form of contact where touch extends beyond the skin to the auratic space around bodies. On the Cretto, participants need to abandon certain postures to collectively explore the silences of gestures, forming a community through listening, proximity, emptiness and anticipation.
The experience in Gibellina centres on the relationship between humans and nature, becoming a site of memory and encounter where citizens and artists reflect on democratic forms of sharing and the discovery of poetic gestures. In this submerged city, we are guided to express through gesture the memory that links tragedy with suspension, connecting Gibellina to Paradise. Dante's Paradise reshapes the body within an aura defined by movement and change, leading to a timeless space of happiness.