Alessandro Sciarroni's 5-Hour Performance Dream at Triennale Milano

Alessandro Sciarroni presented the latest version of his long performance Dream at Triennale Milano on April 1-2, 2023, as part of the FOG festival dedicated to performing arts. The five-hour piece involves six performers and a pianist (Davide Finotti) exploring a dreamlike dimension through movement, breath, voice, piano notes, and visual contact. The audience is free to move, enter, exit, and return. Sciarroni's interest in extended duration stems from a desire to focus on the object of research, creating tension between performers and spectators, and discovering something otherwise invisible. Dream debuted in December 2022 at Festival d'Autunno in Paris. The work features a seventh performer, the pianist Davide Finotti, whose sounds (and silences) interpret the performers' emotional states, and Valeria Foti, who handles lighting discreetly via iPad throughout the five hours. Sciarroni describes the performers' state as a "corpo sonnambulo" (sleepwalking body), simultaneously present and elsewhere. The piece builds on Sciarroni's previous durational works like Augusto (one hour of continuous laughter), Turning (40 minutes of spinning), and Save the last dance for me (20 minutes of exhausting traditional dance). During the pandemic, a frontal version was explored, but the Milanese audience's engagement convinced Sciarroni that this is the definitive nature of the work.