Dante Beyond Borders

Dante Beyond Borders is an Italian Indian theatrical co-production supported by the Italian Institute of culture in Mumbai, born from the collaboration between Instabili Vaganti and Ahum Trust and inspired by the Divine Comedy of the great Italian Poet Dante Alighieri, whose 700 years anniversary after his death is celebrated this year all over the world. Widely considered 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, directed by the Italian award-winning director Anna Dora Dorno, 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.  The sounds of Dante Italian ancient language meet the mudras and gestures of the traditional Bharatanatyam dance, accompanied by the contemporary electronic soundscapes originally composed by the Oscar winning Italian musician Riccardo Nanni, around the leading suggestion of the Absence, an element that permeates Dante’s works. The evocative physical actions of the performer Nicola Pianzola and the dance of Anuradha Venkataraman interact with the videos realized by the artists of the project through a remote collaboration developed during the lockdown. The performance aims to explore the numerous connections between Dante’s work and Indian culture, both from an iconographic, philosophical and theological point of view. In his poem in fact, Dante often mentions India, and places the heaven on earth in the Indian territory, imagining the sun rise from the Ganges.