GIARDINI INDIANI
Impararsi nel tempo degli umili
di Virgilio Sieni

I giardinieri, sono loro, gli umili che innestano nel cuore delle danze orientali occidentali il seme del piangere, quella forma di compassione che solo le persone ultime richiamano col farsi ad una luce che è vita.
La storia e la contemporaneità di quei gesti, le forme d’incontro, gli atti di conoscenza, il giardino come opera d’arte e modo di abitare, il sentire sorgivo della loro presenza che opera in sintonia con la natura, la città, i monumenti e il caos.

Sono i gesti dei giardinieri declinati alle esigenze delle piante, dei fiori, dei prati, dei monumenti intorno, a donare forme di vita artigianale e umana, tanto poetica quanto irrinunciabile. Il giardino si muove e vive coi giardinieri.

Le danze sono un omaggio ai giardinieri che plasmano tanta bellezza, una forma di meditazione che trasmettono quotidianamente con la loro opera e il loro farsi nei giardini di New Delhi. L’accesso ai parchi, ai giardini, la visione di aiuole e piccoli appezzamenti fioriti, cosi come le danze di Gintajali, rendono giustizia a questi viventi nella forma in cui patiamo la potenza dei loro gesti e delle posture talmente antiche, faticose, terrene, da apparire incantate.

L’incontro con alcune danzatrici e danzatori indiani di formazione tradizionale e contemporanea è giocato sulla comprensione e l’ascolto. Dai gesti e gli attrezzi primordiali -zappette, forbici, scope, petali, tubi per annaffiare- dei giardinieri prenderanno vita delle brevi danze che andranno a comporre un atlante emozionale di gesti: un giardino di gesti appunto, che s’inabissa nell’antichità delle posture per irrorare noi, abitanti di questo mondo.

When I go alone at night to my love-tryst, birds do not sing, the wind does not stir, the houses on both sides of the street stand silent.
It is my own anklets that grow loud at every step and I am ashamed. When I sit on my balcony and listen for his footsteps, leaves do not rustle on the trees, and the water is still in the river
like the sword on the knees of a sentry fallen asleep.
Rabindranath Tagore, ” Gitanjali -The Gardener”

Reinterpreting the Moghul tradition of the “gardener” and the meaning of the expression gitanjali – gift and offering of songs – means trying to unravel and understand the unity of poetry, music and movement characteristic of Indian dance traditions.

Inspired by the great poet and writer Rabindranath Tagore, author of Gitanjali – The Gardener, Virgilio Sieni aims to explore expressions of the sensibilities of a new generation of dancers on the subcontinent. The Gitanjali project, begun last April, has used sessions and workshops to initiate a dialogue between Indian dancers and gardeners, concentrating on the composition of visual sensibility, representations of nature and the garden, male and female figures, rhythm, and the manifestation of emotions in physical gestures.

Several gardeners were selected by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura and the New Delhi National School of Drama to poetically spotlight the actions of the care required to maintain plants and trees in an urban context where thousands of visible and “invisible” gardeners contribute to making Delhi greener with their tireless daily efforts. Some classical dancers from various Indian dance traditions were also chosen.

The GITANJALI performance on October 25, 2024 at Bikaner House in New Delhi, involves Virgilio Sieni, six Indian classical dancers and seven gardeners in a choreographic action that combines the various conceptions and visions of the body in western and eastern tradition into a unique, original atlas of gestures. An emotional, poetic garden of gestures.

Learning about ourselves at the pace of the lowly
Virgilio Sieni

Gardeners are the lowly ones who plant the seed of weeping in the heart of eastern and western dances, that form of compassion that only the meek bring to light, and to life, with their actions. The history and contemporaneity of those gestures, forms of encounter, acts of mindfulness, gardens as works of art and a way of life, the flowing wellspring of their presence working in harmony with nature, the city, its monuments and its chaos.
These gardeners’ gestures are focused on the needs of plants, flowers, lawns and the surrounding monuments, shaping an artisanal and human way of life that is both poetic and fundamental.
The garden moves and lives with gardeners.
The dances are an homage to gardeners who mold their beauty, and an expression of the form of meditation they transmit every day with their work and efforts in the gardens of New Delhi.
Access to parks and gardens and views of flower beds and little flowered patches of space, and the dances of Gitanjali, do justice to these people, in the sense that we feel the power of their gestures and postures, so ancient, laborious and mundane, but that seem enchanted.
The encounter with Indian dancers, men and women trained in traditional and contemporary dance, is based on understanding and mutual listening.
The gardeners’ primordial gestures and tools – hoes, shears, brooms, petals, watering hoses – are used to bring to life short dances that come together to compose an emotional atlas of gestures: a garden of gestures, and an exploration of the antiquity of postures that “irrigate” and nurture we inhabitants of this world.