In the splendid setting of Castel Sant'Angelo, the Paradiso installation by Nanou, Pirri and Dorella arrives in Rome

"Nel ciel che più de la sua luce prende
fu’ io, e vidi cose che ridire
né sa né può chi di là sù discende;”

Dante, Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto I

Paradiso is a place, a meeting, a chance for confrontation and an opportunity for community, even before being a performance.
Paradiso is inhabited by the intervention of artist Alfredo Pirri, the choreographic activity of gruppo nanou, with 8 dancers, and music by Bruno Dorella.

The choreography is a succession of actions and images that follow one another without a linear narrative: the visions, the characters inspired by Dante's canticle, act on the space, welcoming the spectators; the reflective materials chosen by Pirri, the floating lights by Marco Valerio Amico, the sounds by Dorella, immerse the observer in a dreamy place.

The space, open for at least three hours a day, is conceived as an active place in which to immerse themselves, creating an impromptu community that enters Paradiso as in a museum exhibition, and freely chooses how to move, how long to stay and what to observe.

The guest is immersed in a scenic space in which the interaction between light and mirrored surfaces, and the proximity of bodies create a feeling of loss of contact with the ground, amplifying the impression of moving in a perception of reality that acts as a stepping stone towards emptiness.

While acting the space with other people, each guest experiences a unique and unrepeatable event, constructing their own point of view: each Paradise is necessarily different as it relates to the space and each day the choreography is enriched with different details and alliances. The memory of the performance is therefore unique for each spectator, in the same place the events are composed and decomposed through an imagined principle to continuously create an unrepeatable experience. Hard to tell.

Born as a result of a reflection by the authors on a series of nodal questions related to the possibilities of live performance in post-pandemic times,the project re-discusses the relationship with the space of the stage and the relationship with the viewer.

Over more than a year and through a series of appointments, residencies and sketches - meant as the progressive deepening and development of research and experimentation - the collective work of the group nanou, Pirri and Dorella has led to the construction of a performative process that removes the concept of beginning and end of a performance, as well as its frontal fruition.

With Paradiso, the authors respond to the necessity for new formulas for cultural participation that identify the need to return to being a live community. This is the starting point for Paradiso's research, which aims at the construction not only of a "show" but of a real "other" place, artistically connoted, capable of restoring an idea and a possibility of cultural aggregation: a live work that is first and foremost a meeting place.