When
25 February to March 1st 2012
Where
Frantoio, Parco Corsini, Fucecchio (FI)
Press office
Camilla Rigatti
Led by Eynat Geva
Sufis are Islamic mystics, and whirling dance is their most well-known practice in the West. Through dance, dervishes seek union with their Creator, spinning around their hearts, which are the site of this ecstatic encounter, the place where the lover eagerly seeks the kiss of love from the Beloved. But the dancer keeps nothing for himself, for it is only by giving that one receives: thus, with his right hand open to the sky, he receives this “current of love” and with his left hand turned towards the earth, after whirling around the heart, this current is transmitted to all Creation.
The workshop explores Sufi and belly dancing, and participants will have the opportunity to use the languages they have acquired as a vehicle for a unique and personal expressive quest. Sufi, which combines physicality and meditation, becomes a discipline that helps the performer to concentrate and search for the centre of their own personality, both performative and individual, through the union of mind and body.
The project is a Creative Residency. Firenza Guidi will collaborate with Eynat Geva to create a performance that uses elements of Sufi and belly dancing to create a new dramaturgy. On Thursday 1 March, there will be a presentation of the work and a solo performance resulting from this collaboration.
Eynat Geva has been practising Sufism for years. She has lived in Israel, Nigeria, Cameroon and the United States. At an early age, she began studying dance, an activity that would accompany her throughout her life. After graduating as a yoga teacher, she discovered Sufism and studied its philosophy, poetry, mysticism, music and, above all, dance.
In her life, Eynat Geva combines teaching Sufi, yoga and dance with being a mother and businesswoman. She has three children and creates new ice cream flavours in her shops in Tel Aviv. The workshop and the presentation of the work that will follow are dedicated to female interculturalism, also in view of the approaching International Women’s Day on 8 March.
The Sufi workshop is part of an intercultural programme that will mark the activities of the Frantoio di Fucecchio until the end of April, when the CULT project, dedicated to second-generation young people, the future new Italian citizens, will be presented.
Director, author and manager of Elan Frantoio, firenza guidi has been producing performances, theatre shows and films all over the world for years. Much of her work is inspired by events, memories and phenomena linked to local and universal history. Through the writer-director’s working methodology, Elan Frantoio’s activities are based on the philosophy of creating and staging new dramas: new because they are unpublished in terms of texts and scenography, or new because they offer adaptations of original classics in their interpretation, or because they belong to contemporary authors never before represented in our country.