In the experience of exile, the displacement of one’s gaze becomes a profound inquiry; uprootedness seeks no protection outside language, which is often the only raft on the sea of estrangement and solitude.Antonio Prete

Treatise on Distance, a work for three dancers, is a story of crossings: thresholds, borders and distances. Here, remoteness becomes a frontier line, a place inhabited by solitude and by the difficulty of encountering and understanding the other. Today, distance is no longer far away, but close at hand—traversable, even domestic.

Treatise on Distance, a space of inner geography, is the awkward, clumsy and superficial attempt to seek the other, to draw their attention, not to feel lost and isolated—because our need for the other is primordial. Yet truly meeting is difficult, just as it is difficult to think of the other as a harbour, a saviour, someone who welcomes us without reservation. The performers’ constant encounters and clashes reveal our inability—driven by pride, fear and insecurity—to offer ourselves to the other with honesty; the risk is that we become a poor imitation of ourselves.

We share a home, a bed, children, work, public transport, restaurant tables, crowded beaches, offices… we are so close, yet so far apart. (E. Sciannamea)