About
March 12th, 2024, at 4:30 p.m. | Sala Onu, Teatro Massimo
Greetings by the mayor of Palermo, professor Roberto La Galla
Introduces and moderates Maurizio Rosso, former classical dancer, Teatro Massimo of Palermo
Speakers:
Giorgio Palumbo, professor of theoretical philosophy, University of Palermo
Maria Antonietta Spinosa, professor of aesthetics, Faculty of Theology of Sicily
Giuseppina D’Addelfio, professor of philosophy of education, University of Palermo
Jean Sebastian Colau, director of dance, Teatro Massimo of Palermo
Conclusions by maestro Marco Betta, superintendent Fondazione Teatro Massimo di Palermo
Admission is free subject to availability.
Access to the Sala Onu will be through the entrance with stairs located in the porter’s lodge/artists’ entrance area (Via Pignatelli Aragona side).
The hall can also be reached via the accessible step-free elevator route (upon arrival at the theater, contact the theatre staff for more information).
Programme
The dance of meaning - between ethical and aesthetic dimensions
We are human because we are involved, from top to bottom, in the game of meaning. It awakens with us every morning giving us a vital charge and, at the same time, a fruitful restlessness; it faces us richly with promise but does not spare us the burden, so many times disconcerting, of the problematic. In any case, it makes us tireless seekers of a “hidden harmony” (Heraclitus) that secretly holds the threads of the wonder and toil of existing. We carry in our innermost being the foreboding and longing for it even when we can no longer recognize the depth of this thirst; in many ways we tend, in fact, to trivialize and betray it, seduced by images of successful life inexorably condemned to disharmony. And yet the demand for meaning, even in an unexpressed way, continues to press in on us, remains a companion on our journey perhaps dormant, repressed, but never erasable. What is at stake is not the mere urge to survive, but being able to sense why it is worthwhile to send our steps forward, sustained by the right and duty to hope. What if we were called to turn them precisely into dance steps, capable of interpreting the gift-competition of being in the world to the fullest? But what call of the beautiful and the good, what interweaving of ethical passion and aesthetic passion would keep them in harmonious motion? Perhaps it is intense and generous vibrations of gratuitousness that give soul and momentum to the dance of meaning.
“The greatest fluency and strength is what a good dancer wants for nourishment-and I wouldn’t know what a philosopher’s spirit could desire more than to be a good dancer. For dance is his ideal and also his art, even, ultimately, his only religiosity, his ‘divine service’ ”
F. Nietzsche (The Gaiety of Science)