Frontières#Tunisie Is the outcome of the first step of work presented on the 13th of September 2024 in Tunis in the story by Noemi Verducci for L’altra Tunisia
During the residency, all types of borders were explored from the geographical to the mental. All of these explorations were given back to the audience in the form of a dance or monologue through which the participants expressed the meaning they attribute to the word “border”. “I wanted to see the world and I wanted the world to see me, but I remained on the other side of the border”, says one of the performers, and here future aspirations (or dreams of glory as another of the participant defines them) inevitably intertwine with national policies which, in the name of a hypothetical “defense” of the borders, impose restrictive measures on the freedom of movement of citizens from certain countries. The theme of migration, particularly felt in Tunisia, and the difficulty of Tunisian citizens in obtaining a visa for Europe, whatever the reason, could not help but come up.
“I am a wall jumper” declares an other participant, while trying to incessantly overcome the physical boundaries represented by the bodies of the other performes. The attempt to overcome the barriers, which takes the form of a desperate dance, suddenly ceases and another awareness is reached: “resist in order to exist even in the face of the barricades.” “The walls, the barriers, the borders will never be able to stop our dance. We will continue to dance.” Thus ends the show. With an exhortation to resistance in other forms, with means, artistic ones, which are capable of overcoming boundaries and limits and allow us to travel light and far. The exhortation to dance is also addressed to the audience, who is invited to dance, to let themselves go to the notes of the music.
And to try to break, in a collective way, those boundaries that are very often mental before being geographical, that separate us from others and that make us forget that before being citizens we are human beings who share the same experiences and aspirations.