An event that will tear down the invisible wall that separates performers and audience is due at the Toniolo Theatre on December 7. The three protagonists of our story are cellist Mario Brunello, pianist Ezio Bosso, and choreographer Virgilio Sieni. Brunello and Bosso, who died in 2020, shared a close, tormented friendship: “As a friend, Ezio left his mark on me. Music made our friendship blossom, but it also ended it. At some point, music grew crazy, started speaking a language neither of us understood, dressed in gold and glitter, and sang to us like Ulysses’ sirens, sounding off from all corners, stomping away erratically. Inevitably, the weak, shallow part took over. We clashed, we fought, we parted ways. Ten years later, sonata Roots, which Ezio wrote for me in 2014, calls me, and makes me think it’s time to make its voice heard, or at least what I think is its voice, with its roots in Bach, Cage, Messiaen, Pärt.” Thus Brunello wrote Sieni in a letter.

Mario Brunello at the cello and cello piccolo, the Virgilio Sieni Dance Company, and Maria Semeraro at the piano will perform in Un amico – Omaggio al mondo della musica di Ezio Bosso (lit. ‘A friend – Homage to Ezio Bosso’s music world’) a show where motion and music cannot do without one another. “Dancing on the music that innervated Mario and Ezio’s relationship – explains Sieni – renders a sense of kinship so strong that turns bodies into light. That is how dance enters the stage as extreme gesture, as a form of love that grows out of feeling alive”. On December 7, a concert will grow into motion as music supports, sustains, and pushes upwards.