Modena welcomes the New Year with the show that opened the Olympic year in Paris, in front of an Arc de Triomphe enveloped by an immense crowd. Next 31 December "Galileo", the phantasmagorical aerial creation of the French company Deus ex Machina, will arrive in Piazza Roma, starting at 11 pm, to transform the passage to 2026 into a night of pure wonder. Admission will be free while places last and the festive atmosphere will be amplified by Radio Bruno's DJ sets with Enzo Ferrari and Giordano Vaccari, before and after the show.
The initiative was presented at Palazzo Comunale this morning, Wednesday 3 December, with a press conference attended by Mayor Massimo Mezzetti, Culture Councillor Andrea Bortolamasi, Massimiliano Morini for the Modena Foundation, Claudio Borgianni of the Entreterre Foundation, and Roberto De Lellis, curator of the event.
In this Modenese edition, "Galileo" will maintain intact the poetic and visual power that made it famous: a large sphere suspended up to 50 metres high, which becomes the centre of an aerial choreography in which ropes, fabrics, swinging trapezes, straps, a Chinese pole and vertical dance intertwine to narrate the most revolutionary of perspective changes, the passage from geocentrism to heliocentrism. The figure of Galileo, a circus director dressed in white, guides the audience lightly through ancient legends, daring theories and scientific insights, from a world that imagines the Earth resting on the shell of a giant tortoise to the audacity of the law of gravity.
The entire story unfolds suspended from a crane fifty metres above the ground, while monumental projections of nebulae and constellations light up around the performers, animating the seventeenth-century profiles of the buildings in Piazza Roma. The city thus becomes a natural theatre that breathes with the scene, an urban stage that opens up to the sky and is traversed by lights, dances and figures that seem to defy gravity. The large steel sphere, the true heart of the show, rotates above the spectators' heads like a living planet, generating a continuous flow of acrobatics, luminous apparitions and suspended gestures.
The finale is a vision of pure grace: the sphere, transformed into a kind of star carousel, rotates the performers like little animated characters drawing sweet trajectories on New Year's Eve. It is a moment that touches all ages, from children to grandparents, from the most curious audience to those seeking a different kind of emotion: Galileo is designed for everyone, "from 3 to 90 years of age", and brings with it that rare ability to combine wonder, poetry and celebration in a single shared image.
Founded in 2009 by professionals who have participated in major international stage events, the Deus ex Machina company is today one of the most recognised groups in the field of aerial shows. "When you dream alone, it is only a dream, but when you dream together, it is already reality": this phrase by Helder Pessoa Camara is at the basis of their poetics, made up of bodies that defy physical laws, ingenious structures that become stage sets and an approach that fuses dance, theatre, visual arts and pyrotechnics.
Their artistic journey is studded with light festivals, tours and collaborations around the world, from Taiwan to the United Arab Emirates. Translated into eight languages, 'Galileo' is one of their most popular creations, captivating audiences with different sensibilities and traditions.
As was the case for the last New Years' Eve of 2024 and 2025, the one marking the beginning of 2026 also merges the languages of art with technology and creativity in the context of Modena as a Unesco Creative City for Media Arts. The show is promoted by the Municipality of Modena, with the support of the Fondazione di Modena, and is organised by the Fondazione Entroterre.
