the show
On the paths of Europe
What if Alexander the Great had actually been a foreshadowing of Europe? In other words, what if he had anticipated the contradiction between the desire for conquest and the curiosity for otherness, which are at the basis of the historical restlessness of the so-called European civilization, a civilization which has always been divided between the angst of conquest, which destroys, and the apprehension of knowledge, which preserves?
Mattia Cason and Alessandro Conte have been doing research for many years starting from this suggestion. The first result of this research was a performance called “Etiopjke/Le Etiopiche” (winner of the 2021 Scenario Award). This performance was focused on the arrival of Alexander the Great in Asia and his clash with Memnon of Rhodes, a Greek mercenary commander at the Persians’ service. It was imagined as the precursor of a new, but at the same time very ancient idea: that of an Afro-Asiatic Europe. An idea that Alexander would make his own only at the end of his adventures.
“On the Paths to Europe” is born from the essential themes of “Etiopjke/Le Etiopiche”, in particular it connects the rediscovery of the European civilization’s Afro-Asian roots with contemporary migrations, suggested as a precious opportunity for us Europeans to truly understand who we are.
The dramaturgical plot of this new performance is centered on Mattia and Alessandro’s encounter with Muhammad'Abd al-Mun'im, a publisher, writer and poet from Aleppo who was forced to abandon Syria because of his opinions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Muhammad's latest novel, “Ala Durūbi Awrūba” / “On the Paths to Europe", narrates the story of how he escaped from Syria and his journey to Ljubljana, beyond Turkey, the Aegean Sea and the Balkans. This book makes up the initial inspiration for the performance, along with an ancient 15th century text called Sirat al-Iskandar wa mā fihā min al-'Ajā'ib wa 'l-Gharā'ib / “The story of Alexander and the wonderful things it contains”, which narrates the adventures (in part historical, but mostly fantastic) of Alexander in Africa and Asia. Starting from these writings, an interlacing of stories, symbols and echoes take place that the audience will follow in different languages - from Friulian to Amharic, from ancient Greek to Arabic, from Persian to the language of dance.
The astonished gaze of these three anarchists recalls the adventures of Alexander and the history of Europe, trying to re-collect how originally it too was different, foreign, so wonderfully foreign as to remind us of those who still cross the sea today in an attempt to reach Europe.
But it's not just the people on the stage who do this: along with them, standing by their side, the whole audience will find themselves hoping, sometimes even believing, that curiosity and the wonder that it produces can really be a first step to take the individual beyond identity, society beyond the nation and Europe beyond itself.
The body dances
A performance on the move, which experiments with places on the margin and recognizes the essence of Europe in them. A multilingual, multimedia performance that embraces and mixes temporal planes, involving the audience and local communities in a collective reflection - a reflection which is danced, sung, imagined - around the idea of Europe.
The enormous building of the naval school of the imperial and royal Austro-Hungarian army, the name of a Yugoslav submariner who started out collecting forbidden books at the bottom of the sea and ended up dying as a partisan in the mountains of Bosnia… is anything else needed to begin an adventure between reality and imagination?
At the mouth of the river where at the end of the 19th century the Austro-Hungarians had built a port for timber trafficking that later fell into disgrace due to the invention of an ethnic border of hatred and violence, today only two dilapidated freight cranes remain, a few seagulls and a bewildered man muttering: “It’s here, it’s here… it’s here that Medea saw the sea again!”
Lipa in Slavic languages means linden, and the linden tree in many Slavic cultures has sacred connotations. Lipa, however, is also a village where on April 30, 1944, the Nazi-Fascists massacred 287 civilians. Today, there remain the debris of some of the houses set on fire and a museum, a wonderful museum desired, created and managed by wonderful people, and the feeling is that at least here the sacred has won over horror.
It is said that the night before the battle, Emperor Theodosius had visions while praying all alone on these heights. It is also said that at the same time in Hebdomos church in Constantinople a demon foretold the defeat of paganism, but given the impossibility of further investigation, we are content to bring a bit of Byzantium to the banks of the Hubelj.
La forma del paese abbarbicato sul colle, o che è lo stesso, la forma del colle col paese, e gli altri pendii, e gli altri colli tutt’attorno, ha l’immediatezza di un’intuizione, la forza di una visione. Come se suggerisce la realtà del mondo oltre ogni discorso, ogni retorica, e su tutte oltre la retorica della nazione. Dove siamo? Di qua, di là? Ma che senso hanno qua e là quando il paese si sviluppa altrimenti, verso l’alto a guadagnarsi il sole, la vita, l'amore?
Coming from Italy, the Rafut crossing is doubly fascinanting: on the one hand, the bars and the border guards' huts hark back to the Yugoslav otherness of the day before yesterday, so close and yet so elusive; on the other, from the woods just behind them, a minaret emerges as if out of nowhere, harking back to another otherness, beyond the Balkans, beyond the sea, so distant in time that it has made us forget how much we belong to it.
The little church is actually dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Blaise, but for me from the beginning it has always been that of Saint Blaise only. If at first I thought it was just a trick of memory, now that I have read that the saint was born in Sivas, the ancient Sebaste of Armenia, instead of the pastel-colored frescoes I suddenly see the sand and indigo of the wonders of the Ikhanid Sultanate, mount Matajur already seems mount Ararat and everything makes sense.
Guido Pasolini was killed in this area, here where hills become plains without us even noticing. “Without the Judrio, you will never be able to understand the eastern border,” Mr. Zoran warned me, raising his head from his cup, the foam of cappuccino right under his nose. For more than a year I have not followed his advice and in fact up to now I have understood little or nothing; so now expectations are high, but around me there is only a great, great silence.
Halfway between the old castle on the hill built by the patriarchs of Aquileia and the new one down in the city where Count Coronini almost choked to death during lunch at the news of the peasant revolt of 1713, there is a beautiful white library surrounded by birch trees, in the square there is a little wooden house for used books and on the birches a little wooden house for birds.
The Lendkanal once connected the Wörthersee right into the city center, right up to the market square, and it is said that even some Venetian gondoliers once came here to transport goods on its waters. Now all that remains is an old, disused barge and a vague feeling of nostalgia, either for the Venetians themselves, or for the Slovenians before the plebiscite, or possibly even for the Jews before the Holocaust.
Just next to the square, next to the main road that once connected Aquileia to Noricum and beyond, there is still a small hidden courtyard completely closed in on itself, as if it wanted to keep a secret. You can eat an excellent spelt soup there and if you happen to be there on a summer evening without too many tourists you can even hear the love song of the scops owl.
Here in 1478 between Creta di Aip and Zuc de la Guardia the Ottoman troops of Skender Pasha clashed with a Venetian contingent leaving on the battlefield the spears from which the name. Skender's surname was Mihajlović, in Turkish Mihaloǧlu, he was the descendant of a Byzantine governor who converted to Islam, and everything up here seems to confirm the legend.
“In Čepovan there is a madman who organizes a festival of shows, readings, music, sculptures etc. where for a few days east of the Bainsizza the Yugoslavian flag waves again…” said my professor of theatrical anthropology at the Nico Pepe Academy in Udine more than ten years ago. Now that the madman has become a dear friend, we also have finally succeeded in getting to Čepovan. Long live the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia! Long live Anton Špacapan!
In ancient times it was called ad Aquae Gradatae, and noticing now on the mosaics of the Basilica of Sant’Eufemia the various motifs reproducing the signs of the sea waves on the shoreline, it all makes sense. All except the fate of the wonderful byzantine ivory bishop’s chair from Alexandria of Egypt, which for centuries was the pride of the city and which most people consider lost forever.
Qui nel 1478 tra la Creta di Aip e lo Zuc de la Guardia le truppe ottomane di Skender Pascià si scontrarono con un contingente veneziano lasciando sul campo di battaglia le lance da cui il nome. Skender di cognome faceva Mihajlović, in turco Mihaloǧlu, era il discendente di un governatore bizantino convertitosi all’Islam, e tutto quassù conferma la leggenda.
Italian Gorizia, of course, and yet “Villa quae Sclavorum lingua vocatur Goriza” according to the medieval document that mentions it for the first time. And in fact, it is enough to climb any hill around here to understand that it is first of all geography that makes Gorizia also Gurize, Gurissa, Gorica, Görtz. And it is beautiful, so beautiful up here on the Transalpina’s roof, where with just one glance it seems to embrace all of Europe, continent and sea alike.
Italian Gorizia, of course, and yet “Villa quae Sclavorum lingua vocatur Goriza” according to the medieval document that mentions it for the first time. And in fact, it is enough to climb any hill around here to understand that it is first of all geography that makes Gorizia also Gurize, Gurissa, Gorica, Görtz. And it is beautiful, so beautiful up here on the Transalpina’s roof, where with just one glance it seems to embrace all of Europe, continent and sea alike.
On the paths of Europe 2024
In 2024 the show reached and re-discovered 31 places on the fringe, meeting local communities and talking to them about Europe.
To retrace all the dates, click here!