also scheduled on
September 22, 2023 h 17:30 e h 21:00

Within the Oltre le mura / Beyond the walls project

“You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours”.
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

LEONIA is an itinerant and participatory performance that uses the contemporary circus to build a bridge between reality and utopia. 100 years after the birth of Italo Calvino, the compagnia Quattrox4 pays tribute to his Invisible Cities by building an artistic journey that leads the public to experience imagination, starting from his living, kaleidoscopic and visionary writing.
Calvino’s work opens our eyes to what is, what could be and what we would like our world to be. This love poem to cities feeds our imagination through the paradox, the overturning of levels, the decomposition, the representation of the impossible and helps to create an extra-ordinary space.

Inspired by this narrative richness, the show directed by Clara Storti recovers some visual and thematic suggestions of Calvino’s work to compose a creative and artistic journey starting from scenic elements and small installations, which enter into dialogue with spectators and performers.
The public will participate in the creation of the spaces that will be inhabited by the performers, co-creating worlds made of fragile relationships or multiple constellations. If we consider the body/object relationship to be the origin of the contemporary circus, the objective of this participatory performance is to question the spatial coordinates through the use of unusual places and objects, very different from the proper circus tools, to transform the relationship between artist and spectator in a dialogical and multifaceted artistic experience.

Quattrox4 is a centre for the contemporary circus based in Milan where it is active since 2011 as a place of exchange and meeting for circus practice. In 2017 Quattrox4 established FUORI ASSE, an international exhibition of contemporary circus, designed to place circus on the contemporary scene of the performing arts.

direction and scenography: Clara Storti
performers: Danilo Alvino, Luca Lugari, Luca Torrenzieri
sound / light designer: Flavio Cortese
costumes: Anna Kemp
recorded voice: Ulisse Romanò
production director: Filippo Malerba
production: Quattrox4 Circo ETS
co-production: Associazione Sosta Palmizi
with the supporto of Ministero della Cultura – Progetti Speciali 2023 Circo
sponsor: Play Juggling
a special thanks to BAM – Biblioteca degli Alberi Milano and Romaeuropa Festival

Oltre le mura / Beyond the walls is a project by Fondazione Fabbrica Europa focused on the themes of community, body, movement and virtual reality. The programme includes performance and workshop activities by Italian and international artists.

With the support of

photo: Cosimo Trimboli