Ombra viva

As part of the PNRR project JERUS-IT-ARTS, the Accademia Nazionale di Danza meets Birzeit University and the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music.
On Saturday 18 October 2025, opening DNAnd—the format that selects young choreographers to create original works with and for the Academy’s new generations of dancers—Ombra viva will premiere.

This new creation features students and faculty from both institutions and is inspired by Mahmoud Darwish’s verses “E noi amiamo la vita” (We Love Life). The choreography kindles like a collective breath that becomes gesture, encounter and community. Bodies move through an interlacing of actions that tell of life’s strength and steadfast beauty—especially in the face of shadow. Born of dialogue between different traditions, the music seeks the deep roots linking our culture to that of the Middle East, finding them in the folk music of southern Italy, where melismas, the flavour of the maqām in melodic motion and improvisation flow naturally into the sonorities and tunes of the oud, brought on stage by Tamer Al-Sahouri, Director of the Edward Said Conservatory, together with his student Yazan Fares. Spoken voices, in Italian and Arabic, weave overlaps and echoes to make this homage to life—resilient and renewing—resound.

Living shadow
ظلّ حيّ (ẓill ḥayy)
And we love life
if we can find a way to live it.
We dance between two martyrs,
raising among the violets
a minaret or palm trees.
We love life
if we can find a way to live it.
We steal a thread from the silkworm
to build our sky
and weave the exodus.
We open the garden gate
so that jasmine floods the streets
as on a beautiful day.
We love life
if we can find a way to live it.
Wherever we go
we plant luxuriant trees
and harvest victims.
We blow into the flute the colour of far-off distance
and mark with a whinny
the dust of the path.
We make our names indelible as stones.
Lightning, make the night brighter,
light it a little more,
for us who love life
if we can find a way to live it.

Choreography: Martina Tordiglione
Music composed by Tamer Al-Sahouri and Renata Russo, performed live by:
Tamer Al-Sahouri & Yazan Fares — Oud
Debora Cordello — Soprano
Claudio Capponi — Viola
Francesco De Rubeis — Percussion
Renata Russo — Piano

Dance: Students of the 5th and 6th Preparatory Courses, Accademia Nazionale di Danza
Lighting design: Stefano Pirandello

Director, AND: Anna Maria Galeotti
DNAnd Artistic Committee: Corinna Anastasio, Silvia Obino, Nicoletta Pizzariello

Project Manager, JERUS-IT-ARTS: Giuseppe Empoli
Scientific Lead, JERUS-IT-ARTS: Francesca B. Vista
Coordinator for Internationalisation: Morgana Bruno
Incoming Artists’ Tutor: Renata Russo