by Ramona Abrudan, photo: Maria Ștefănescu
Under the unmistakable signature of the Barba–Gleijeses–Varley trio, the performance “An Ordinary Day in the Life of the Dancer Gregorio Samsa” stood out at the BABEL Festival as a moment of aesthetic and emotional rupture – an irreversible descent into the depths of bodily and artistic consciousness.
Inspired by the Kafkaesque universe and filtered through the echoes of Artaud’s revolt, the performance does not merely retell the story of the metamorphosis – it viscerally reinvents it, in a scenic language that transcends words. Chiara Lagani’s dramaturgy offers not a translation, but a dislocation of meaning: words become relics, fragmented signals of a collapsing mind, later rediscovered in gestures, sounds, and lights.
Lorenzo Gleijeses, dancer and actor trained under the guidance of Eugenio Barba, is not merely a performer, but a body in dissolution. His transformation on stage is a physical revolt against his own condition. Gregorio’s body no longer performs – it protests; it no longer expresses – it pleads; it no longer communicates – it survives. Every gesture is a clenching, a silent prayer, a refusal to accept an imposed form. The choreography, conceived with almost inhuman precision by Michele Di Mauro, evokes the sense of a post-human clock: a dance of resistance, of fracture, of tearing.
The austere and dark scenography becomes a space of contemplation, where light no longer creates settings, but becomes a vital fluid – sometimes a blade, other times a shelter. On this emptied stage, the dancer’s body pulses like an alienated presence, silence itself becoming a language.
The soundscape, crafted by Mirto Baliani, deepens the rupture: archaic music intertwines with the lost voices of consciousness – the father, the master, the lover – all turned into echoes within a fragmented identity. In a moment of sonic crisis, silence is shattered by “Casta Diva”, which brings not serenity but revolt: a prayer turned into irony, a bitter memory of lost humanity.
The peak of this turmoil comes in the finale: house music summons another metamorphosis – a mechanical one, that of an urban insect. It’s a trance without release, in which dance no longer redeems but merely confirms that the being still exists. Gregorio is no longer a man, nor an insect – he is a drifting body, trapped in its own pulsation.
The performance does not provide answers, but raises a silent cry: about identity, about rebellion, about the impossibility of remaining the same in a world that demands our transformation. It is a rare kind of performance – one that does not end with applause, but continues to haunt – in the mind, in the flesh, in memory.