March –––– June 2025: 17th edition
20 years on the assassination of Samir Kassir
SPECTACLE – CONTEMPORARY BALLET
PAZZI
Stéphanie Bowl, Geraldine Lonfat, André Pignat
Switzerland
Refusing passive submission to the world and its morals that make dreams inaccessible and justify fatalism.
Friday 4 June 2010, 9:00 pm
The Dome, Beirut Downtown
The Interface company chose to seek inspiration for its new work of art from the life of Saint Marie-Madeleine de Pazzi. A few lines narrating her amazing destiny drew us in such an intense manner that we could not resist the urge to get a deeper understanding of her mystery.
PAZZI is
to refuse passive submission; submission to the world and its morals; the type of submission that makes dreams inaccessible and justifies the fatalism of one’s own life.
PAZZI is
to subject oneself to an interior quest, to the absolute that was found through it. It is also to live happiness, through the beats of one’s heart, through one’s suffering. It is going where the spirit and the body form nothing but a single vibration, where love ceases to be a word and becomes a state…
PAZZI is
to refuse to flee.
What does this life of mysticism make us ponder?
Such a phenomenon goes beyond the moral and scientific convictions of the 21st century.
It made us become aware of a new manner of conceiving freedom, through chosen submission and suffering.
Submission
To accept any order without attempting to understand its causes and consequences. To just act, in order to free one’s spirit from daily and futile thoughts; to hence be able to open up to the truth that is present in each one of us.
Suffering
Not to fear it anymore, until death is no longer feared. Not being afraid to die also means not being afraid to live.
Indeed, what prevents actions is suffering, the fear of losing what we have, of perhaps suffering someday, of dying.
If we were to take into consideration the notion of freedom that was defended in the 21st century, we would find ourselves faced with two diametrically opposed definitions of freedom:
Suffering and submission on one side, individuality and refusal of suffering and death, on the other.
In the face of these fundamental oppositions, we observe that the values of Marie-Madeleine de Pazzi’s century are related to Action. Indeed, in the 16th century society, the word freedom was considered meaningless. And yet, it seems that people could go to the end of their madness and were able to achieve their task.
Let us magine Marie-Madeleine de Pazzi alive today…
She would be locked up in a psychiatric ward and given large doses of medicine. She would be prevented from reaching her ideal, and ultimately from delivering her message to humanity.
The Interface company chose to inspire itself for its new work of art by the life of Saint Marie-Madeleine de Pazzi. A few lines narrating her amazing destiny drew us in such an intense manner that we could not resist the urge to get a deeper understanding of her mystery…
Pazzi is
Pazzi was shown
The Beirut Spring Festival is a free of charge annual arts and culture programming that celebrates freedom and renewal in Beirut, in memory of Samir Kassir.
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