“The Silent Waltz of Shadows” in Wuppertal

A House of Mirrors and Multiplicity

Francesco Vecchione’s The Silent Waltz of Shadows opens itself to an invited, participating audience at the INSEL in Wuppertal

by Klaus Dilger

There is a peculiar thrill in experiencing Francesco Vecchione’s The Silent Waltz of Shadows: one enters a house of mirrors, but these mirrors do not reflect—they multiply, fracture, and question. The piece is a choreography of the self, or rather of the selves—unstable, layered, constantly observing and observed. Vecchione’s stage is no conventional theatre, but a philosophical and psychological laboratory, a threshold space where identity is not discovered but staged, interrogated, and shared.

In this sense, the work is in direct dialogue with Pirandello’s Uno, nessuno e centomila. Like Pirandello’s protagonist, dispersed across the gazes of others, Vecchione embodies the impossibility of singularity. His movements are taut, often restless, rarely at ease—finding brief moments of release only in fleeting intimacies with his dance partner. The two female dancers and one male dancer, all strong movers, navigate the astonishingly adaptable performance space with dreamlike assurance, merging with the audience into a single stage unit and creating an unbroken stream of consciousness that flows across past, present, and now.

Francesco-Vecchione-–-The-Silent-Waltz-of-Shadows©TANZweb.org_Klaus-Dilger

Music acts as a philosophical interlocutor. Arvo Pärt’s Fratres opens a wound into eternity; Schubert’s Der Tod und das Mädchen whispers of finitude; Caruso and Donizetti recall the theatrical excess of love; Louis Armstrong and Nick Cave return us to human community. These contrasts form a web of contradictions—sublime and grotesque, melancholic and playful, solitary and communal—like the selves we inhabit.

Vecchione’s interruptions, moments in which the audience is woven into the emerging performance, are always deeply human, at once comic and unsettling. They remind us that identity never exists in isolation. As Jean-Luc Nancy writes, being is always a “being-with”: the self is not constituted alone, but in coexistence. Laughter, hesitation, participation—each gesture from the audience becomes part of the choreography, a quiet affirmation that life itself is relational, unstable, improvisatory.

Francesco-Vecchione-–-The-Silent-Waltz-of-Shadows©TANZweb.org_Klaus-Dilger

Here lies the paradox of The Silent Waltz of Shadows: what begins as personal material is transformed into a collective ritual. Shadows that might seem to bind instead become companions, leading us through the corridors of selfhood. The venue—INSEL—reflects this openness. Conceived originally for a state theatre stage in Naples, the work now embraces proximity, improvisation, and the gentle chaos of human interaction, fitting almost seamlessly into this remarkably flexible Wuppertal performance space.

The piece leaves no ready-made answers, only traces: a reflection, a tension, a fleeting recognition of multiplicity. Yet it neither weighs down nor overwhelms. On the contrary: it is quiet, subtle, joyful—a reminder that our fragmented selves, our shadows, are not defects but invitations to connection. To experience Vecchione’s work is to enter a space where mirrors do not merely reflect but converse; where the self is never solitary; and where the audience itself becomes a shadow, a dancing presence in a shared existential experiment. That, at least, is the spirit of Vecchione’s approach.

The Silent Waltz of Shadows is not a performance one leaves unchanged. It is a delicate rehearsal of being-with, of existence as constant coexistence—a fleeting encounter with the wondrous complexity of our shared humanity. A silent waltz, in which all shadows dance. And yet, it is also a mute cry: a palpable despair not always explained, lingering as a riddle in the ruptures with the audience. Can healing, can reconciliation, emerge from such fractures?

Choreography & Direction – Francesco Vecchione Dance & Co-Choreography – Maria Anzivino, Sophia Otto, Antonio Tello Sound Design – Jan Van Triest Stage Design – Francesco Vecchione Lighting – Julio Escobar, Francesco Vecchione Costume Design – Leandro Fabbri, Francesco Vecchione Text – Manuela Barbato, Francesco Vecchione
Co-Production – Francesco Vecchione, INSEL, ArtGarage DanceCo
with the support of Kulturbüro Wuppertal and Sparkasse Wuppertal – special thanks to Bettina Milz and the Pina Bausch Zentrum