Mewlana Djalal-od-Din-Rumi (1207-1273) – born in Balkh, now Afghanistan and died in exile in Konya, Turky – is the world’s most famous sufi mystic poet, mostly known thanks to the ceremony of the whirling dervish, a brotherhood founded by his son Sultan Veled.
This ritual ceremony has been unknown for a long time in the west, where far echoes had come through the tales of XIX century european travellers; but in the last twenty years the ceremony has become an attraction for the european public, altered to the point that it has almost lost its deep ritual and spiritual value.
On the contrary Rumi’s poems have been translated in every western language, which testifies western culture’s high interest towards the Sufi thought, set on the crossline between the two religions, almost a junction between the Islamic and Christian belief.
This performance – by mainly using music, singing, movements, lights and dancing – aims to build a meeting point for the two artistic sources, the eastern traditional Rumi heritage and the western contemporary Wilson sensitiveness, finding a strong connection in the form prevailing the narration, in the extreme refinement of movement and sound, in the harmony to be seen and in the image to be heard.
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Nine performers / dancers are being selected by Robert Wilson during various stays in Istanbul, where he has met and then gathered together initiates from different confraternities (tekke). The musicians are being selected by Kudsi Erguner, who has taken inspiration from the various musical cultures between far and middle-east, almost embracing all the countries crossed by Rumi during his wandering: among them a persian singer that takes on stage the original sounds of the Rumi poetry in farsi and a young boy, familiar with the living practice of the sufi confraternities.
As in the recent case of I la Galigo – the show inspired by the indonesian cosmogonic poem – Robert Wilson explores an original way that leads him to a creative crossroad between traditional art and contemporary sensitiveness, far from any folklore temptation, giving a new tangibile proof - also through his love for oriental art – that artists can give immediate life to those ideals of harmonic cohabitation among the people that politics is hardly able to guarantee.
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PRODUCTION DATES
Athens (preview) Pallas Theater 28 May 2007
Warsaw (world opening) Teatr Wielki 22/24 February 2008
Ravenna (Italian première) Ravenna Festival 15, 16, 17 July 2009
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