Science for Welfare and Warfare

After almost two years of hiatus the Sunday’s flea market in Piazza dell’Indipendenza (Independence Square) in downtown Florence was finally returned to a real scene. The merchandise for sale on the stalls was exactly the same as two years ago. If one has a good memory, then one cannot but notice that Big Government’s propagandistic war narrative, so sacred yet so drenched with rhetoric and fiction, is not the epic of the Trojan War. It was only a filthy civil war — so few smart people with a public 13-month salary a year and 365 meal vouchers, yet so many street vendors, petty shop owners, hawkers, peddlers and even beggars with a desert landscape and a sky above them.

The Great Humanity

I spent some time at my favourite Internet point, which, incidentally, is also the ideal place for one to actually share with Hikmet’s “great humanity” all the rights they do not have. And yet, paradoxically but not too paradoxically, the “first class people” are the ones who are more worried about the dangers that “third class people” may pose to their wealthy healthy life. But, as they say, if poverty is contagious prosperity is indivisible, and hence one reason for cautious optimism may be that early studies from the University of Oxford would give confidence that almost all the vaccines approved by the Western authorities should confer protection against the Indian variant of COVID-19.

Somewhere in Between

A rainy Sunday afternoon in downtown Florence, melancholy hours of solitude, and who knows where time goes. On the outskirts, however, there are long queues of people with umbrellas from all over Tuscany patiently waiting for the privilege of being vaccinated. If it had been a sunny day, there would also be long queues of people without umbrellas at shops and stalls for any kinds of food. There’s just not enough time to be everywhere.

Nebuchadnezzar

Accessibility openness ubiquity or rather maybe everything everytime everywhere.

The Hub

“Lair free all”, graffiti signed by MìLES in the Parterre gardens at Florence, Italy.

Save the Last Dance

O tempora, o mores! Yesterday, Saturday, May 8, with the blessing of city and regional authorities, the glorious Teatro SMS of the People’s House in Grassina, Metropolitan City of Florence, has been turned into a “mass vaccination hub”. Photo: la Repubblica.

Terpsichore in Sneakers

The Regional Council of Tuscany finally noticed that so far the government’s financial assistance packages were given only to big groups and lobbies to the detriment of too many “loose dogs”, which Vincenzo Ceccarelli, the Democratic leader in the Council, grossly summarises into a temporary list: “[...] from the wholesale trade of food products to private dance schools, from flower sellers to school and company canteens, from street trade fairs to organisers of live performances and theatre producers”, he said. “These are just a few examples, certainly the list could be larger; that’s why we asked the Regional Council to carry out a timely survey on the Tuscan territory to eventually evaluate autonomous intervention in support of such categories”. If nothing else, now Terpsichore may at least hope not to be a meek lamb sacrificed upon the altar of a posthumous conscience.

Jurassic Pop

Speaking on a talk show broadcast on Rai 1 on November 19, 2020 the Minister for Youth Policies and Sport, Vincenzo Spadafora, said that the closure of dance schools, gyms, cinemas, theatres and museums will be extended until further notice due to the seriousness of the epidemiological situation. He said also that “A difficult period awaits us, but we will be present to help all those who must stay closed up”. Yeah, right, but do not kid yourself — this only means that he and his fellow government members will profusely pour public money on government-backed big sports agencies. And you are not one of them. Thus you know you will fade like a dying swan. In fact, they are likely to have other priorities that they consider more important than your daily useless life. There’s nothing personal about it — they just find that it is more remunerative to sell pay-per-view soccer games than to buy a ticket for the very stage of the Swan Lake. And maybe it’s better so. It’s a good thing not to sit next to certain persons.

Dance of a Lonely Heart

A dancer wearing a face mask performs in front of the Metropolitan in Via del Corso at Rome, Italy to protest COVID-19 restrictions that have closed dance schools all over the country. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP.

Stretching

Young dancers do a leg hold while sitting on a night bus in London, England at 10 P.M., first Friday of 10 P.M. curfew for pubs and restaurants. Photo: Dougie Wallace/The Guardian Print Shop.

Blowin’ in the Wind

Cellist Camille Thomas plays Ravel’s Kaddish on a Stradivarius dating from 1730, from the roof of the Institut de France in Paris, to “nourish the soul” and “carry beauty” to the city’s confined residents during the second nationwide lockdown.

Minus 45 degrees Celsius

After 45 years of honoured history, the Centro Studi Danza of Grassina, founded and directed by the former Maggio Musicale Fiorentino étoile Maria Grazia Nicosia, announced its closure through a sober little note which can barely sum up her artistic and cultural legacy as a “ballet missionary” in Grassina’s Teatro SMS of the People’s House. Photo courtesy of S.M.S.F.C. Casa del Popolo Grassina.

Unnecessities

BioNTech and Pfizer have apparently won the vaccine race if it is true, as it seems, that their joint panacea proved more than 90 percent effective at preventing people from getting COVID-19. To say the least, the vaccine’s distribution appears rather complicated by its requirement to be stored at minus 80 degrees Celsius, but hopefully mankind will succeed without having to condemn the planet to a new, post-apocalyptic Ice Age. It’s also quite obvious that its distribution will be gradual and partial, as (at least in principle) first priority should be given to the most frail and vulnerable members of society, which may mean or not that in the meantime many “unnecessary” people could be sacrificed for the health of those more involved (and influential). Maybe I’m biased, but I just can’t forget that, in a moment when cinemas, dance studios, exhibitions, libraries, museums, and theatres were nearly deserted (due to an hysterical, book burning media policy), the rulers ordered to close them all and at once, instead allowing soccer games — as well as other gladiatorial shows — to continue. But because personal matters are, by definition, too personal to be dealt with in the big picture of such an emergency crisis, well, let’s make a virtue of necessity (and let’s each of us bury our “unnecessities”).

Two Christmas Days and Two Christmas Trees

Among the new restrictions and measures released by Italian Government after the entry into force of the DPCM of November 3, 2020 in order to fight the virus, there are at least two which may give a good idea of the era we live in. First, after closing theatres, dance schools, and any other kind of (non-profit) artistic, cultural, social and recreational associations, museums and exhibitions were closed too, although there was not much crowd around them. Secondly — and not less importantly — the expiry of the closure date of dance schools and studios was extended from November 24, 2020 (as ruled by the DPCM of October 24, 2020) to December 3, 2020 — so, quite paradoxically, it’s like they’re locking already locked doors and closing already closed windows. Peaceful demonstrations were held almost everywhere in the country, but with no other effect than a harshening of the restrictions. Furthermore, most industrial and commercial categories are immensely suffering from the public health emergency, and the country is at risk of falling into an unprecedented social crisis. The lack of accountability of the state — and of its employes, executives and legislators — is probably a big part of the problem of communication between the poors and riches. Philosopher and former Mayor of Venice, Massimo Cacciari, speaking at Piazzapulita on La7, put it quite clearly: “I want to say to my colleagues in the state and parastate that soon or later they’ll come to you too, inevitably. And I hope they will get there soon, because it is intolerable that only half the Italian population alone must pay for this crisis”.

Physics of the Impossible

The Importance Of Not Being Immortal

Only time will tell if the ideological restrictions imposed on art, culture and sport to safeguard public health from COVID-19 will work, or if instead the good intentions of the political and scientific potentates will turn into a disaster of biblical proportions. Once again, the melodramatic rhetoric of the locked down ones, lined up like silhouetted scarecrows “through the Zooming-glass”, will smash against a mountain of ignorance. Whatever your hashtag is, the anti-virus world government simply does not care, because you exist only in a virtual world, while in the meantime the real world is being transformed into a global prison hospital where you can only live fearing death all the time. So don’t think you can get away with a passphrase such as “I live of dance”, especially if your life is now a non-autobiographical broadcast on Zoom. No one can live only of dance. You need music. You need friends. You need teachers. You need mirrors. You need barres. You need shoes. You need dressing rooms. You need theatres. You need stages. You need audiences. You need applause. You need physical and spiritual nourishment just as birds need to fly. And, of course, you need good health too! So don’t forget to turn off your cellphone when entering an auditorium, library, theatre, worship hall, or any other place where people get inspired for life.

The Greatest Wealth Is Health

No convincing explanation was given so far about the criteria which government used in deciding what to allow and what to block in its national war on COVID-19. Whatever they may say, it’s a fact that artistic, cultural, social and recreational organisations were sacrificed at the altar of professional soccer, in fact dooming the great majority of non-profit institutions to financial failure. Of course, government ministers promised financial help to compensate damage caused by their daily and nightly decrees, but, as a matter of fact, they will provide financial support only to their fellow club members. As usual, as always. And it’s not a peculiarity of one rather than another — it’s a national custom, and it’s much more contagious than any virus. In such hard times, even innocent gatherings such an outdoor sports festival organised by a city council can transform itself into a street market run by loyal salesmen of the city councillors’ after-work leisure life. I discussed such a case a few days ago with an official in charge of the supervision, and I found no consolation in the fact that my interlocutor told me he never heard of the Associazione Culturale “Il Delta della Luna”. It is not a question of pride, of course, but only wonder, as the Associazione Culturale “Il Delta della Luna” contributed for over ten years — always for free — to the sports festival of Florence’s Quarter 2. Yet it is not a drama, for, as they say, in everyone’s memory, and no one’s memory.

The Things of Life

Italy’s Department for Sport published on its website a handbook with some clarifications on the DPCM of October 24, 2020, leaving no room for interpretative doubts concerning the possibility of keeping dance schools open:

“If not classifiable as gyms, dance studios are to be regarded as cultural or recreational centres, and therefore falling within the order for closure referred to in Article 1 paragraph 9 lett. f) of the DPCM of October 24. Hence, ballet classes are also suspended”.

Trunks in the Square

The silent protest of show business workers in Milan, Italy Saturday, October 10, 2020: 500 empty trunks lined up in Piazza del Duomo with a red banner: “One sector one future”. Video credit: Press Office/Cover photo by Francesco Prandoni.

When Time Stopped

Mariana Sousa, a student of the Ballet Paraisópolis, warms up during a rehearsal in Paraisópolis favela, outskirts of São Paulo, Brazil, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The 200 ballet students of Paraisópolis, the second largest favela in the city, restarted rehearsals after five months, with a choreography about a military police raid that put their community in mourning last year. Photo: Nelson Almeida/AFP via Getty Images.