“ERUPTING”

“Because pain is more painful, if silent„ Giovanni Pascoli – Nuovi Poemetti (1909) -from “Il prigioniero”

Contemporary society, bold and unpredictable, heralding significant and rapid changes, advocating for fortuitous goals and unexpected luxurious sufferings, increasingly and swiftly becomes saturated

with nefarious feelings that converge into what we all know as a sense of disorientation or the

experience of emptiness, one of the constitutive stages of collective life. The consequence of all this

is undoubtedly the pathologization of anger, an excessive and sudden feeling characterized by

overwhelming anguish, pressing and irreducible, a mere signal that something is not going in the right

direction.

In this regard, Aristotle, in his treatise on ethics titled Nicomachean Ethics, probably dedicated to his

father Nicomachus, states that virtue perpetually teeters between excess and deficiency,

emphasizing that every virtue and vice are neither inherently good nor bad: they are simply a matter of

symmetrical harmony. This also applies to anger. Anger is not inherently evil but entirely depends on

human action, considering that the “state” is not sufficient, and the “activity” is also necessary,

namely power and action. And so, anger, the emblematic manifestation of profound personal and

inner suffering, becomes the most immediate response to the absence of that idea of “perfect”

happiness.

Therefore, it is only by navigating this challenging crossroads, strongly marked by cathartic purposes,

that we can ensure a new form of balance for ourselves. Based on these assumptions, “Erupting,” in

an attempt to channel the impetuosity of abyssal pain towards gentleness and beauty, relies on the

Aristotelian axiom that “getting angry is easy, everyone is capable of it, but it is absolutely not easy

and, above all, not for everyone to get angry with the right person, in the right measure, in the right way,

at the right time, and for the right cause.”

Moreover, in the words of philosopher Emil Cioran, “Erupting” speaks openly to all those facing “a

world unified in the coarse and terrible,” to all of us who “have the phenomenon in our blood,” who are

born already “in the fever of the visible,” and for whom every strategy aimed at moving towards

“liberation from oneself and from everything” will involve the virtues of discernment, care, and

disillusionment. Thus, “to become futile, we must cut our roots, become metaphysically foreign.” At

this point, it is inevitable to ask: “Today, who cares more about the soul?” What follows is a possible

and strongly desired pacifying process that, fueled by movement, pushes emotions to the point of no

return. A perpetual climax that culminates in an explosion, seeking a managerial balance that

eschews violence but processes certain emotional states toward a propitious and liberating flow.

In this bold attempt to explore human emotions, the multidisciplinary Bulgarian dance company

Karakashyan & Artists collaborates with the Marche Foundation Il Bottone to delve into the complexity

of mental health and the processing of anger through the performance titled, precisely, “Erupting.” The

performative act involves four dancers from the Bulgarian company who confront the diLerent

nuances and expressions of anger, using their bodies as brushes to materialize the visceral

embodiment of anger itself, transposing it onto blank canvases. As they contort, they spontaneously

throw color onto the canvases, staining them, creating vivid and original works that testify to

the ephemeral nature of our emotions. Every movement becomes an irreproducible, passionate, and

vibrant splash, defining that inner turmoil that often proves to be intangible.

The Karakashyan & Artists company, known for its engaging and avant-garde production, embracing

the beauty of the intimate, visceral, and subversive, invites the audience to immerse themselves in

the pulsating energy of this performance. By intertwining the inherent forces of dance and visual arts,

it generates a compelling narrative that invites the onlooker to a heartfelt participation in the dialogue

on the importance of recognizing and understanding the complexity of articulated human emotions.

– Domenico de Chirico