En–Knap, vicino/lontano & Mattia Cason

Aquilee

45 min

#available for touring#co-productions

2025

Seemingly disparate things, such as Christianity, the goddess Isis, Ptuj in Slovenia, Judaism, Pasolini, Alexandria in Egypt, the figure of the kurent, Gnosticism, and migrations, converge and coalesce in the small town of Aquileia in Italy, once, one of Roman epicentres, boasting the largest mosaic floor of the Roman West / Early Christianity with 760 sqm, in an erudite dancer's burning vision of an Afro-Asiatic United Europe. A Europe with otherness at its core, a European-non-European Europe, always somewhere in-between, in transversals, always already interconnected, interrelated, interdependent, like a mosaic, united through fragments of meaning and layers of time, attempts of unity.

Aquilee is a “narrative dance”, a close embodiment and a deep reading of a mosaic as a silent testament but also a political manifesto of an Afro-Asiatic United Europe, historically, collectively escaping or eschewing borders, nations or states. Bridging imagination, performativity, memory and collectivity, Mattia Cason might be dancing in disparate performances but he is always dancing one piece, in the name of the outrageous revolutionary force of the past.

The lessons of the Mistress of the West.

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Photo: Katja Kremenić

While Don Mirko turns the large bronze key in the door, everything outside is silent, and among the cypresses, the iron crosses, adorned with a weave of laurel and oak with the phrase Dulce et decorum est pro Patria mori engraved on them, seem like ghosts. In the antechamber there is a machine that seems to have come out of 2001: A Space Odyssey. “It's the security system,” says Don Mirko, “it drives me crazy every time.” We enter the basilica, and right away I can't take my eyes off the wooden ceiling of the central nave with an overturned ship's hull, and I almost crash into a barrier. “Careful, look,” says Don Mirko, inviting me to look down. Below us are the mosaics from my childhood, the mosaics from the fourth century, the mosaics where Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, Saint Athanasius walked, and before the saints, where normal people walked too. Normal people who must have had a very different relationship with the world around them. Where did the idea of all these animal species, all these marine species, cuttlefish, moray, octopuses come from? “One hundred fifty-two, like the nations known at the time,” says Don Mirko. In the main scene, the one with Jonah, the fish, the animals, the species, all the other species that are not human seem to be the real protagonist, not Jonah. After thanking Don Mirko, I set off into the night towards the Roman inland port. The cypress-lined road runs alongside the old docks, which have collapsed over the centuries into a narrow canal, covered with Lemna minor, where once there was a river, the Natisone, with a bed more than fifty metres wide. The door to the East, the way to the snow-capped mountains of Lebanon, the way to the lush delta of the Nile, is barred by a bolt, impossible to get through. When I turn around, irritated, I notice next to me, under a capital, a photo of Pasolini visiting Aquileia. Suddenly, fireflies appear above the stretch of duckweed.

I work with body, voice and imagination out of two convictions. Imagination has to do with memory rather than fantasy. And body and voice are THE vessels for conveying and sharing collective memories; political utopias buried for too long in foreign lands.

The piece is a solo of the body, movement and voice inspired by the mosaic floor of the Basilica of Aquileia. It is a performative experiment with a body in motion, not yet officially dancing, and a voice that speaks and sings, not yet officially theatre, in an attempt to give shape to a truly physical theatre, so to speak, to a “narrative dance.” It is a wish to bridge the gap between the arts and academia, more specifically, between the performing arts and archeology, out of the conviction that the body is key for both domains. It is a political manifesto supporting Afro-Asiatic United Europe, and a prayer, a prayer in the name of the outrageous revolutionary force of the past.

Mattia Cason

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Photo: Katja Kremenić

press

The work invites us into a symbolic order whose meanings never become fully readable, emerging instead through their constant withdrawal. In doing so, it points to the mysticism of history carried within our bodies and cultures, while reflecting on the idealisation and mystification of the other that shapes our relationship to difference.

Jaka Bombač, Neodvisni

A layered creation of rare intellectual complexity, yet light in its use of signs: a beautiful challenge offered to the spectator. Cason brings ancient postures to the stage , tracing six to seven thousand years of iconographic and linguistic history through gestures of rare delicacy and expressive depth, some attaining truly extraordinary lyrical heights.

Cason uses the mosaic of Aquileia as a “synecdoche”: a symbol encompassing the complex, layered Afro-Asian influences on European civilisation, a crossroads of myths, languages and migrations that have shaped the continent. The performance seeks to embody and bring to the stage the utopian vision of a united Europe, “founded on the plurality and otherness that have always inhabited it”.

Aquilee resembles nothing we have seen before. It is a work that certainly asks for a leap of faith and an ability to make cultural connections in order to navigate its “magmatic” breadth of historical and mythological perspectives. Yet we believe it is also a creation capable of reaching its audience directly, as the standing ovation at the end of the performance in Sarzana showed.

Renzo Francabandera , Paneacquaculture

bio

Mattia Cason is (since 2025) the artistic director and (since 2021) a member of the contemporary dance ensemble En–Knap Group. His authorial projects are developed within the broader artistic platform E for Europe, which explores contemporary European realities through site-specific performance formats and interdisciplinary approaches. His dance works have been included in the official programme of GO! 2025 and in the programmes of the Vicino/Lontano festival, where they are performed in border areas and situated within specific spatial and socio-political contexts. In doing so, he pursues a central artistic vision: to move beyond the conventional theatre stage and function as a powerful discursive and public act. Cason works as a dancer, actor, choreographer and director; in 2021, he received the Premio Scenario for the concept of his original performance Le Etiopiche. With background in anthropology, he explores images of both the contemporary and past Europe, which he conveys through the pre-logical language of the body.

credits

Concept and choreography Mattia Cason

Co-choreography (hip-hop sequence) Željko Božič

Performed by Mattia Cason, Giovanni Seck

Original Music Paolo Forte

Lighting design Lorenzo Diofili

Visuals Omar Ismail

Set, costumes and props Klinc Primož, Chiara Defant, Vladimir Vodeb

Texts and editing Dražen Dragojević

Photography Katja Kremenić

Video Omar Ismail

Production Vicino/lontano, En–Knap Productions

En–Knap Productions

Founder and artistic director Iztok Kovač

Managing director Marjeta Lavrič

Executive director and head of finance Julija Travančić

Artistic director En–Knap Group Mattia Cason

Rehearsal Director En–Knap Group Ana Štefanec Knez

Executive producer Karmen Keržar

Post-production producer Nataša Ramovš

Text Dražen Dragojević

Head of communications and creative content Valerija Intihar

Designer Marko Damiš

Programme coordinator and organiser Katja Gabrijelčič

Technical team Omar Ismail, Hotimir Knific, Gal Škrjanec Skaberne, Maja Pahor, Aljaž Zaletel, Fabijan Purg

En–Knap Productions and Španski Borci Cultural Centre (managed by En–Knap Productions) are supported by: City of Ljubljana – Department of Culture, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia