After the world premiere of the new piece for the EurAsia Repertory in India, last February 2023, OMMANIPADMEHUM by Stefano Fardelli, will be on tour this August Tuesday 22nd at Pedro II Theatre in Ribeirao Petro (State of Sao Paolo), at 7pm local time.

The piece will be staged in loco and danced by a part of the EurAsia Dance Company along with the Black Swan Dance Company and IORM’s dance community.

The tour in Brazil is brought by EurAsia Dance Project International Network in partnership with IORM-Instituto Oswaldo Ribeiro de Mendonca.

The piece has been commissioned by EurAsia Partners Kolkata Centre for Creativity, India, and DANCEHAUSpiú´ of Milan, Italy, in collaboration with Berlin Dance Institute in Germany. 

OM-MANI-PADME-HUM which in Sanskrit literally means “honouring the lotus jewel”, focuses on the history and rituals of the Tibetan Buddhists of the Yellow Hat Order with a particular focus on their connection to the Shaolin monks and thus the study of their training. The idea for this new project stems from the need to continue the exploration and examination of the connection between spirituality and ritual through movement, already begun with the previous solo NAMU: the Sanskrit word namu – or namas – means ‘devotion’. 

Throughout the creation period, the four dancers of the company followed the training of the Shaolin monks, studying their meditation and combat techniques. The next step was to translate, through the ‘contemporary code´, their sequences and movements by bringing them into space and making them abstract, thus maintaining their essence but making them functional to the staging. The same process was followed for the creation of the costumes and atmospheres of the piece.

The encounters with the Buddhist monks and the martial arts students, the study of their practice and ceremonies are the foundation of the choreography. When the bell starts to play the rite begins, the dancers enter what could be a temple and lead us in another dimension and place, accompanied by original music by Francesco Ziello.

Hats, cloaks, a sun symbol of the divine, and the gold of temples are often rendered abstract by an aseptic architectural use of space and by a string or orchestral music that creates contrasts between oriental images and western sounds.

To conclude, a multicultural cast that translates the movements of the Shaolin monks with different nuances that reveal the origins of the various dancers and thus a quality of movement linked to the traditional dances of the performers that influence, and give character to, the entire piece.

Choreography: Stefano Fardelli 

Duration: 35 minutes

Dancers: Tejaswini Loundo (India), Lourdes Maldonado (Mexico)

Original music: Francesco Ziello 

Music: 10 Preludes Op. 23 by Serjei Rachmaninoff, Concerto For Violoncello And Strings by Dobrinka Tabakova, The Well-Tempered Clavier Book1 by Johann Sebastian Bach, Such Different Paths by Dobrinka Tabakova

Rehearsal Assistant: Tejaswini Loundo – Luana Marini Bellisari

Costume Designer: Marco Hernandez | De La Croix

Video Maker: Salvatore Lazzaro

Visual Artist: Matteo Bittante

Photography: Salvatore Lazzaro and Antonino Dimondo