BENGALURU: Directed by Italian award-winning director Anna Dora Dorno, Dante’s Beyond Borders is an experimental theatre and dance performance. Co-produced in partnership with Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Mumbai, it’s born from the collaboration between the Italian theatre company Instabili Vaganti and the Indian association Ahum Trust. It’s inspired by the Divine Comedy of Italian Poet Dante Alighieri, on the 700th anniversary of his death.
Considered as one of the greatest works of world literature, the poem, written in the first person, tells of Dante’s journey through the three realms of the dead — hell, purgatory and heaven.
The performance explores different artistic languages: experimental theatre, dance, cinema, video art, electronic music in order to bring the spectator into the otherworldly journey made by Dante.
Performed by Anna Dora Dorno, Nicola Pianzola and Anuradha Venkataraman, the play is in English and ancient Italian. The sounds of Dante’s ancient Italian language meets the mudras and gestures of Bharatanatyam dance, accompanied by contemporary electronic soundscapes, originally composed by the Oscar-winning Italian musician Riccardo Nanni.
The performance aims to explore the numerous connections between Dante’s work and Indian culture, from an iconographic, philosophical to theological point of view. “Dante’s Beyond Borders raises from the unexpected, long lockdown, where innovation and the struggle to keep up with arts and cultural collaborations were sometimes mixed with dim feelings.
Finally, here we are, ready to attend to the show on stage, celebrating the power of art and the absolute beauty of real, deep exchanges between cultures, here the Italian and the Indian ones,” says the director of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura Francesca Amendola.‘Dante Beyond Borders’ will be showcased at Ranga Shankara from November 30 and December 1.