17

Astra

Donne e Madonne

Creation for the National Art Gallery of Siena National Premiere: October 18–19, 2024 — National Art Gallery of Siena

A group of women moves through the halls of the National Art Gallery of Siena, offering the audience a contemporary embodiment of the museum and a sensitive "experience" of the feminine world between past and present.
The work is inspired by the women portrayed in the Gallery’s paintings; the choreographic gestures draw from distant memories, following a free and expressive creative path that unfolds between shadow and light, beauty and human monstrosity, desire and sensuality.
The dancers' bodies embody ancient and intangible restlessness, revealing the eternal feminine conflict between strength and fragility.

With a conscious gaze towards the past, the performance becomes a journey through an idea of restless and multifaceted beauty, an invitation to experience the National Art Gallery of Siena through the lens of dance and its emotional connections with the artworks preserved in the museum.

"I do not believe I am just one woman; I am at once many women and many men. I am places, animals, cities, villages, families, memories, emotions, objects, and people I know — but I am also realities unknown, unexplored, and unseen, which my imagination reaches, revealing identities of the past, present, and future."
Francesca Lettieri