PUNTO DI FUGA (Vanishing Point) is the first stage and prologue of a broader project dedicated to Thyestes, a work by the tragedian Seneca. What may be regarded as the most harsh and merciless of the Latin author’s tragedies becomes a pretext for addressing, through dance, the abuse of power, desire taken to excess, and the absolute moral licence that often emerges in relationships between individuals when faced with the tempting banquet of possession.

Here, the narrative opens onto an empty, silent space: under construction, modular, geometric, like a kind of Monopoly board with buildings and streets yet to be built and conquered; a chessboard gradually revealed, with roles and powers still to be distributed.

Four “shady” characters enter from the four corners of this unclaimed space. Each seems, in their own way, to want to claim ownership of it, to contend for it inch by inch. They take measurements, analyse tactics and possibilities, test one another’s strength and devise their own strategies of domination—to obtain, to seize, to exercise power.

Each encounter that follows between these potential kings is a futile attempt at coexistence, destined to fail in the face of the effortless logic of oppression. The exercise of power at the expense of the other reveals their inability to share or enter into dialogue; their inability to question their own point of view in order to meet difference; their difficulty in breaking up and dividing property, in giving away a part of it and receiving in return something that might unsettle, weaken or change them.

The vanishing point invoked by the title—the point in perspective towards which parallel lines appear to converge—expresses this paradox, this “fiction”: the impression that it may be possible, sooner or later, to touch one another and draw closer, fostering encounter and the difficult dialogue between differences. This was a central question in the year of cultural dialogue between Italy and Russia, through which this creative project came into being.