THE TABLE is a participatory performative experience, a scenic system that explores the dynamics of human connection through the language of danced movement. The scene opens onto a table—symbolic and concrete element, a gravitational center and an invitation to act. Around it, bodies move like fragments of time stolen from joy, evoking familial bonds, memories, and forgotten rituals.

An elderly woman watches, still and intense. In her being, time recurs: remembered, traversed, and resurfaced; she offers the richness of one who carries memory, gifting knowledge to the eyes of those who look.

A particular mise en place where everything blends together, the air becomes an active space between bodies, and the picture paints itself within its frame, generating a field of occurrences where every gesture—even the unexpected one—becomes a compositional element of an unwritten score. At the center of these ever-changing tableaux vivants, something else moves in a different form of surprise: the practice of waiting, of staying, and of enduring—actions far from passive, rather springboards for ethical and artistic postures.

THE TABLE thus becomes a pretext to cooperate and to rekindle the roots of connection and shared action. One senses the fragrance of a “togetherness” that cannot be commanded by individual will, but can only be served—renewing the condition of being ready, prepared to lose one’s “little,” in a stumble into the void that precedes letting go (of oneself and of doing). Perhaps finding oneself full with empty hands.

WORKING METHOD
Bodies, oriented toward dissolving the urge to be protagonists of their own interests, rekindle the desire for the other—to find them at their side, immersed in an action that allows no linearity, predictability, or control. An act whose principles are both leading and being led, explored collectively, offering the gift of a path that transcends the sequential logic of rules, remaining open to a design that emerges and self-composes according to the order of apparent chaos.

By exploring the boundaries of a single, shared rule—one that guides research without ever prescribing it—bodies grant themselves permission to inhabit, each time anew, a presence on stage that, by engaging with complexity, transforms them into co-authors of a broader, perhaps quantum, vision—where temporal and dimensional planes blur, overlap, and redefine themselves.

A DISTINCT PARTICIPATORY COMMUNITY
With the desire to create a community in the making, the project is nourished by the active and transversal participation of twelve performers—both professionals and amateurs—from different backgrounds and experiences. This plurality is the lifeblood of the artistic and relational process, highlighting a dynamic and biodiverse cohabitation capable of sustaining an autopoietic system, where each element acts and reacts in interdependence with the others.

THE TABLE, in this way, indirectly reflects a political vision that resists the impulsive urge to do everything by and for oneself, embracing instead an alternative logic of cohabitation and cooperation—one that welcomes difference in the rebirth of a shared time and space.

Like a hopeful celebration of “not knowing,” The Table invites the imagination of a shared blossoming, in the beauty of a dance that no longer belongs to anyone, but to everyone, together.

At the heart of the project lies the longing to include other people, other communities, other differences in the experiential matter of the work—imagining open encounters with the public.

Written in collaboration with Alice Milani, Olimpia Fortuni, and Flavia Marini.