Modena greets the year 2022 with an open-air New Year's Eve celebration combining myth, art and new technologies with two digital installations and an aerial dance show, starring the Unesco site with Piazza Grande, the Duomo and the Ghirlandina.
Programme
The myth of Phaeton
From 31 December to 3 January video mapping on the cathedral
Timetable:
- 31 December from 23.15 to 23.30 / from 00.30 to 01.00;
- 1 January from 7.15 p.m. to 9.15 p.m;
- 2 January from 7.15 p.m. to 9.15 p.m;
- 3 January from 7.15 p.m. to 9.15 p.m.
Digital installation 'A Different World
From 31 December to 3 January - Piazza Torre, next to the Torre Ghirlandina -
Timetable: the video installation repeats on a loop at the following times:
- 31 December from 7 to 8.30 p.m. / 11 to 11.15 p.m.
- 1 January from 7 to 9 p.m.
- 2 January from 7 to 9 p.m.
- 3 January from 7 to 9 p.m.
The installation, inspired by photographer Stefano Unthertiner's book of the same name shot on the Svalbard Islands, is a large-format projection, offering the public an immersive sensorial experience: the square will be transformed into a large winter set, an expanse of ice invading the city's historic architecture and transporting participants into a different world, where the snow and the Arctic landscape will be so close that they will feel as if they can touch them. A set of cameras will monitor some areas of the square where adults and children, with the movement of their bodies, will be able to interact with sounds and images, determining their shape.
Clairière Urbaine' aerial dance performance
In Piazza Grande on 31 December
Timetable: from 11.30 p.m. to 11.50 p.m. midnight break, from 00.05 a.m. to 00.30 a.m. (in the event of bad weather, the show will be rescheduled for the evening of 1 January at 9.30 p.m.)
The only performance will be on New Year's Eve from 11.30 p.m., staged by the French company Retouramont, a pioneer of vertical dance.
The performance, which lasts about forty minutes and is divided into two parts with a New Year's Eve toast in between, is entitled "Clairière Urbaine", which literally means "urban clearing" and refers to the "interminable spaces" of Leopardi's ascendancy. The idea behind the performance is the dialogue between human bodies and the monumentality of a symbolic place such as Piazza Grande, with the dancers, hoisted on ropes, crossing the space between the clock tower of Palazzo Comunale and the Unicredit bank building, designed in the 1960s by Gio Ponti.
