Ma a che serve la luce? by Virgilio Sieni at Teatro Vascello, February 18 to 21, 2027

Ma a che serve la luce? Le ceneri di Gramsci, the dance piece by Virgilio Sieni on Pier Paolo Pasolini's poem, plays at Teatro Vascello in Rome from February 18 to 21, 2027, at Via Giacinto Carini 78, in Monteverde Vecchio. There are four performances: Thursday, February 18 and Friday, February 19 at 21:00, Saturday, February 20 at 19:00, Sunday, February 21 at 17:00. The show lasts 55 minutes. Choreography, direction, space and performance are by Sieni, alone on stage, with Pasolini's recorded voice and music by Johann Sebastian Bach, William Basinski and Odetta Holmes. The production is by Teatro della Toscana and by the Centro Nazionale di Produzione della Danza Cango of Florence. Vascello can be reached by bus 75, which stops in front of the entrance, or by lines 44, 710, 870 and 871. By train, from Ostiense station get off at Quattro Venti, a few steps away. Tickets are bought from the official show page on the Teatro Vascello website, which links to the authorized presale circuit, or at the theater's box office. Prices are published on the venue's official channels.

Language: performed in Italian. No English version or English surtitles are announced.

The show premiered at Teatro della Pergola in Florence on November 26, 2025, for the 50th anniversary of Pasolini's death. Sieni dances the tercets of the poem, alternating his own voice with the poet's recorded one. Below you'll find the dates, the content of the show, the music, Pasolini's poem and its link with Rome, Sieni's biography, the history of Teatro Vascello, how to get there, where to eat and the most frequently asked questions.

Ma a che serve la luce? at Teatro Vascello: dates, times and running time

Ma a che serve la luce? has four performances at Teatro Vascello, from February 18 to 21, 2027, each 55 minutes long.

The schedule

Thursday, February 18 at 21:00, Friday, February 19 at 21:00, Saturday, February 20 at 19:00, Sunday, February 21 at 17:00.

A short running time

Less than an hour: the Saturday performance ends before 20:00, the Sunday one before 18:00. It's a show that fits easily into a Roman day, even after a museum visit or a walk on the Janiculum, and leaves all the time for an unhurried dinner.

Who signs the show

Choreography, direction, space and performance by Virgilio Sieni. Recorded voice of Pier Paolo Pasolini. Music curated by Sieni. Lights by Sieni and Marco Cassini. Sound design by Mauro Forte. Slides by Pietro Viti. In the acknowledgments appears Mimmo Cuticchio, who gave the show the framework of a Palermo puppet.

The production

Produced by Teatro della Toscana with the Centro Nazionale di Produzione della Danza Cango of Florence, the home of dance that Sieni opened in Florence in 2003.

What is Ma a che serve la luce? about

In Ma a che serve la luce? Virgilio Sieni moves through Pasolini's Le ceneri di Gramsci with his body, continuing the research begun with the manifesto show Solo Goldberg Variations on the relationship between the languages of the body and works of art.

A score of gestures

The Vascello presentation describes the writing of the dance as a score of beats, gestures and breaths, in which the tercets slide into one another along a perspective that explodes from the details. The body becomes a form of the sensible, an organic meeting of voice and movement.

Choreutic melotherapy

Sieni defines his own work a choreutic melotherapy: a word and a dance that heal, in which the gesture becomes dissident and the body opens to the community through a sort of sung and danced oratory, between celestial matter and civic commitment.

From Sabaudia to the tercet

In the author's notes, published by Vascello, the starting point is the documentary in which Pasolini comments on the view of Sabaudia and denounces the cultural flattening and aesthetic devastation brought by the consumer society. From there Sieni arrives at the poem, and chooses to dance it in a poetic and vernacular form.

A reflection on ourselves

The critic Roberto Giambrone, in Danza&Danza, reads the show as a reflection on a lost era, very similar to the one the poet deplored 70 years ago, in which one is called to choose between darkness and light, even if only the faint light of fireflies.

The music of Ma a che serve la luce?: Bach, Basinski, Odetta

The show's music, curated by Sieni himself, brings together Johann Sebastian Bach, the American composer William Basinski and the folk singer Odetta Holmes.

The Goldberg Variations

According to the Danza&Danza review, from Bach we hear the Aria da capo of the Goldberg Variations in Glenn Gould's performance: a direct link with Solo Goldberg Variations, the show this work continues.

Melancholia

From William Basinski there is Melancholia, a melancholy and rarefied piece that the same review calls mournful.

The Gospel According to Matthew

From Odetta Holmes there is the spiritual Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, which in Pasolini's The Gospel According to Matthew accompanied the scene of the adoration of the Magi. It's a thin thread tying Sieni's dance to the poet's cinema.

Le ceneri di Gramsci: Pasolini's poem

Le ceneri di Gramsci is the collection of long poems that Pasolini published with Garzanti in 1957, 11 poems that had already come out in magazines or chapbooks between 1951 and 1956. The poem that gives it its title is dated by Vascello to 1954.

In front of Gramsci's tomb

The title comes from a poem imagined in front of the tomb of Antonio Gramsci in the Non-Catholic Cemetery of Rome, in Testaccio, next to the Pyramid of Cestius. It's one of Pasolini's most Roman texts.

The Dantesque tercet

In most of the poems Pasolini uses Dante's tercet, made however almost unrecognizable by syntactic pauses, longer or shorter lines and continuous enjambement. The language tends toward prose and essay, with a lyricism that critics call impure: a new civic poetry.

The other poems

The collection includes L'Appennino, Il canto popolare, Picasso, set at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna during an exhibition of the painter, Comizio, born as Notte in Piazza di Spagna, and L'umile Italia: a journey through postwar Italy that has Rome as its center.

Why dance it

Sieni writes that he let himself be guided by the spoken words and their sound. For a choreographer, the tercet with its rhythm and its pauses is already a score.

Pier Paolo Pasolini and Rome

Pier Paolo Pasolini, born in Bologna on March 5, 1922 and died in Ostia on November 2, 1975, was a poet, writer, director, screenwriter, actor, painter and playwright, among the major Italian intellectuals of the 20th century.

The observer

A close observer of the changes in Italian society from the postwar period to the mid-Seventies, he stirred controversy with the radical nature of his judgments on the then-emerging consumer society: the very theme Sieni starts from.

The 50 years

The show was born for the 50th anniversary of his death, in November 2025, and arrives in Rome, the city where Pasolini lived and that he portrayed in his novels and films, a year and a half later.

The poet's voice

On stage you hear Pasolini's recorded voice, alternating with Sieni's whispered one. For anyone who has never heard it, it's one of the reasons to go.

Who is Virgilio Sieni: the choreographer's biography

Virgilio Sieni, born in Florence in 1958, is a choreographer and dancer, three-time winner of the Premio Ubu, in 2000, 2003 and 2011.

His training

After studies in art and architecture, he studied classical dance with Antonietta Daviso and modern dance with Traut Faggioni. From 1978 to 1983 he worked with Katie Duck's international company Group-o and attended the School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. He trained further in Japan, where he deepened Shintaido, and in New York, where he attended Merce Cunningham.

From I Magazzini to his own company

Back in Italy, he signed choreographies for the company I Magazzini and founded Parco Butterfly, active until 1989. Since 1991 he has led the Compagnia Virgilio Sieni. His first shows look at tragedy, starting with Aeschylus's Oresteia, then at fable, with Studi su Cappuccetto Rosso, La casina dei biscotti and Babbino caro, and at the contemporary, with Requiem and Cado.

Cango and the art of gesture

From 2003 he settled at Cango, at the Cantieri Goldonetta in Florence, where he opened a home for dance. In 2007 he founded the Accademia sull'arte del gesto, open also to non-professionals of every age: from it came Osso, Adagi partigiani, with partisans on stage, and Atlante del bianco.

Theaters and collaborations

He has worked with La Scala, San Carlo in Naples, Massimo in Palermo, Comunale in Florence, Teatro dell'Opera di Roma and the Venice Biennale, with musicians such as Ennio Morricone, Giorgio Battistelli, Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Stefano Scodanibbio and Alexander Bălănescu.

The works

Among his best-known choreographies, besides those already mentioned, are Re Lear in 1992, Elogio dell'ombra in 1994, Il gabinetto del dottor Caligari in 2002, from Robert Wiene's film, Il funambolo in the same year, La città bianca in 2003, Mi difenderò in 2005 and Dolce vita, Archeologia della Passione in 2014. Film, painting and literature have always been the material his body works on.

Pasolini, before today

In 1999 Sieni had already worked on Pasolini with Il fiore delle mille e una notte, from the film of the same name. Ma a che serve la luce? closes a circle opened more than 25 years ago.

Teatro Vascello, a research hall in Monteverde

Teatro Vascello was inaugurated on May 4, 1989 on Via Giacinto Carini by Giancarlo Nanni and Manuela Kustermann, with the company La Fabbrica dell'Attore. From its first years it has hosted contemporary dance alongside drama.

The roots at Teatro La Fede

Before Vascello there was Teatro La Fede, at Via Portuense 78, where in the Seventies Nanni and Kustermann put on shows within what was called the Roman school, a theater that gave priority to image over word.

Teatro Stabile d'Innovazione

In 1998 the Ministry recognized La Fabbrica dell'Attore as a Teatro Stabile d'Innovazione. In 2004 Sala Studio opened. After Nanni's death, in January 2010, the artistic direction passed to Manuela Kustermann.

A February of reread classics

In February 2027 Vascello hosts in succession Carmelo Rifici's Orestea, Sieni's show and Testori's Edipus with Sandro Lombardi: three ways of rereading a classic, between tragedy, poetry and dance.

A curiosity about Ma a che serve la luce? by Virgilio Sieni at Teatro Vascello: February 18 to 21, 2027

The most surprising curiosity is an interweaving of names in Vascello's February 2027 lineup. Sieni, at the start of his career, signed choreographies for the company I Magazzini, the Florentine group founded by Federico Tiezzi and Sandro Lombardi, the same people who from February 23, two days after Sieni's last performance, bring Giovanni Testori's Edipus to the same stage. And among the first shows of the Compagnia Virgilio Sieni, in the early Nineties, was Aeschylus's Oresteia: the same trilogy that opens the month at Vascello, from February 3 to 14, directed by Carmelo Rifici. In three weeks, then, three threads of Sieni's story pass across the same stage. A second curiosity concerns Pasolini: Tiezzi and Lombardi, after the 1994 Edipus, staged his Porcile. The poet from Casarsa, then, ties together all the artists of this February. A third curiosity is material: among the show's acknowledgments appears Mimmo Cuticchio, who gave Sieni a puppet framework. The marionette, Sieni writes citing Kleist, speaks humanly beyond the human: on stage, perhaps, it will be seen.

Tickets for Ma a che serve la luce? at Vascello

Tickets are bought from the official Teatro Vascello website, which links to the authorized presale circuit, or at the theater's box office at Via Giacinto Carini 78.

Online

From the show's page you reach online purchase. The Vascello website explains that this way tickets, subscriptions and cards arrive directly on your phone.

Cards and subscriptions

The theater offers cards for the 2026/2027 season, to be bought at least 24 hours before first use. With the Orestea and the Edipus in the same month, for those who follow Vascello they are a choice worth weighing.

Prices

Prices are published on Vascello's official channels and on the authorized circuit.

Something nobody tells you about Ma a che serve la luce? by Virgilio Sieni at Teatro Vascello: February 18 to 21, 2027

What nobody says is that to enjoy this show you don't need to know contemporary dance. People who don't follow dance often fear not understanding: here the key is the word. Pasolini's tercets are listened to, with the poet's voice and with Sieni's, and the body accompanies them, comments on them, makes them vibrate. The advice is to read the poem Le ceneri di Gramsci first, or at least the first stanzas: 20 minutes is enough. Arriving with those lines in your ear changes the experience. The second thing nobody says concerns the length: 55 minutes is short, but they are dense minutes, with no intermission, in which a single performer holds the stage. It's not a show to see tired after a hard day. The third concerns the place of the poem. Gramsci's tomb is in the Non-Catholic Cemetery, in Testaccio, a few kilometers from Vascello: going there first, on a February afternoon, means seeing with your own eyes the setting of the tercets. In our view it's the best possible preparation, and it costs nothing.

My advice for seeing Ma a che serve la luce? by Virgilio Sieni at Teatro Vascello: February 18 to 21, 2027

The advice is to build a Pasolini day, and to do it on a Sunday. On Sunday, February 21, in the early afternoon, a visit to the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Testaccio, in front of Gramsci's tomb that gives the poem its title. Then the trip to Monteverde, by bus or by train from Ostiense to Quattro Venti. At 17:00 the show, which ends before 18:00. The evening remains free for dinner in Trastevere. Anyone who prefers the evening chooses Thursday or Friday at 21:00: less than an hour of show, then an after-theater in Monteverde. For those who follow Vascello, the weekend of February 20 and 21 fits with the Edipus of Tiezzi and Lombardi, which debuts the following Tuesday: two Florentine shows, a choreographer and a historic pair of theater people who worked together at the beginning. In any case, arrive with a few minutes of margin: in a show that begins with silence and voice, entering with the lights down disturbs everyone.

How to get to Teatro Vascello for Ma a che serve la luce?

Teatro Vascello is at Via Giacinto Carini 78, in Monteverde Vecchio, and is reached by bus 75, which stops in front of the entrance.

By bus

The 75 is the most direct line from the center. The theater also lists lines 44, 710, 870 and 871 as useful, connecting Monteverde with Trastevere and the districts to the west. For evening times, use Atac's route planner.

By train

From Ostiense station the metropolitan train takes you to Quattro Venti station, a few steps from the theater. It's also the fastest way for those coming from the Non-Catholic Cemetery, near Ostiense station and Piramide.

By car

The theater suggests parking along Via delle Mura Gianicolensi, about 100 meters away. There are paid parking lots at Via Giacinto Carini 43, at Via Maurizio Quadrio 22, affiliated with the theater if you show your ticket, and at Via Raffaello Giovagnoli 20.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely mentioned

Everyone knows that Pasolini was also a great poet, besides being a director and polemicist. Less cited is that Le ceneri di Gramsci was born from a precise place in Rome: the poem is imagined in front of the tomb of Antonio Gramsci in the Non-Catholic Cemetery, the cemetery for non-Catholics next to the Pyramid of Cestius. It's one of the few great texts of 20th-century Italian poetry that you can read on the spot, sitting a few steps from the gravestone. A second fact known to specialists and little remembered: Pasolini, a 20th-century poet, chose for these poems the tercet, the meter of the Divine Comedy, bending it however toward prose with pauses, enjambement and irregular lines. A very ancient form for talking about postwar society. A third fact concerns Sieni. His path with non-professionals, from the Accademia sull'arte del gesto to Adagi partigiani, with real partisans on stage, is, in our view, one of the most original traits of recent Italian dance: the idea that gesture belongs to everyone, not only dancers, is the same one that in this show leads him to dance in vernacular, popular form the words of a poet who loved the people of Rome.

The neighborhood around Teatro Vascello: Monteverde Vecchio

Monteverde Vecchio is the high, residential part of Monteverde, above Trastevere, between the Janiculum and the big historic villas.

The Janiculum

The Janiculum is very close: the view over the city before a Saturday or Sunday performance is the best way to prepare for the evening.

The villas

Villa Sciarra and Villa Doria Pamphilj are the two green stops in the area. In winter the gates close early.

Trastevere

At the foot of Monteverde opens Trastevere, with the basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere: the area to go down to for dinner after the show.

The right photo to take at Ma a che serve la luce? by Virgilio Sieni at Teatro Vascello: February 18 to 21, 2027

No photos during the show: in a work in which light is part of the title and of the scenic design, curated by Sieni himself with Marco Cassini, a lit screen is one light too many. The right photo is taken elsewhere. The first, the most meaningful, is taken at the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Testaccio, in front of Gramsci's tomb, the place the poem comes from: a sober, respectful image that tells where the words you'll hear on stage come from. The second is taken on the facade of Vascello, on Via Giacinto Carini, with the poster of Ma a che serve la luce?: better in the dark, before the 21:00 performance, when the lit entrance answers the question in the title. The third is for those who love details: the program sheet with the list of the music, Bach, Basinski, Odetta, photographed next to the ticket. Back home, listening again to those pieces is the simplest way to relive the show. A rule that always applies: no flash, no video, no shots during the final applause while the performer is on stage, unless the theater indicates otherwise.

Where to eat before or after the show

Teatro Vascello has an internal bistro, Coffee Plant Bistrot, useful for a coffee or a snack before the show.

In Monteverde

The neighborhood has trattorias and pizzerias frequented mostly by residents, with more honest prices than Trastevere's: the right choice after the 21:00 performances, which end before 22:00.

In Trastevere

After Saturday at 19:00 or Sunday at 17:00 it's best to go down to Trastevere, where osterias and trattorias stay open late. On Saturday night, book.

In Testaccio

Anyone who spent the afternoon at the Non-Catholic Cemetery can stop in Testaccio, the neighborhood of the Roman quinto quarto trattorias, before or after the show.

Some important events that happened here in history

The history of Teatro Vascello is told by dates. On May 4, 1989 the hall opens with Qui non ci torno più by Tadeusz Kantor and the Cricot Theater of Warsaw. In the early Nineties pass Raul Ruiz, the Centro di ricerca di Pontedera and American and French contemporary dance: dance, from the start, has a stable place in the lineup. In May 1996 the series Extraordinario presents 16 young companies from all over Italy. In 1998 the Ministry recognizes La Fabbrica dell'Attore as a Teatro Stabile d'Innovazione, and in the same year Vascello coproduces a show with the Berliner Ensemble. In the spring of 2001 the cofounder Giancarlo Nanni is the first Italian invited to work and teach at the Actors Studio in New York. In 2003 the Premio Valentino Zeichen dedicated to poetry is born: a poetry prize in a theater, a perfect precedent for a show that dances a poem. In 2004 Sala Studio opens. In January 2010 Nanni dies and the direction passes to Manuela Kustermann. For over 20 years the Fondazione Romaeuropa has brought part of its festival to Vascello, and in autumn 2026 the season opened with Tragudia, Il canto di Edipo. In February 2027 Sieni and Pasolini's lines return to the stage on Via Carini.

Accessibility, students and practical information

Teatro Vascello publishes on its website a section dedicated to accessibility, to be consulted before buying to learn about access, reserved seats and services.

With students

For those studying 20th-century Italian literature, the show is a different way of meeting Pasolini. For those studying dance, an example of the work of one of the most awarded Italian choreographers. It isn't designed for small children.

Punctuality

With a single performer on stage and 55 minutes without intermission, arriving late disturbs everyone. Leave with margin.

February in Rome

February is one of the quietest months to visit Rome, with fewer tourists and lengthening days. Evenings are cool: a coat that's easy to take off in the hall is the most sensible choice.

Who has passed through Ma a che serve la luce? by Virgilio Sieni at Teatro Vascello: February 18 to 21, 2027

On the stage of Vascello and, even before, in the history of the company that founded it, some of the most important names of the contemporary scene have passed. At Teatro La Fede, the first venue in the Seventies, came the saxophonist Steve Lacy, the composer John Cage, the French director Gérard Gelas and the Living Theatre. From the group came Memè Perlini and Giuliano Vasilicò. At Vascello, since 1989, have passed Tadeusz Kantor, Raul Ruiz, the Centro di Pontedera, Teatri Uniti, Moni Ovadia, Carlo Cecchi, Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Teatro Valdoca, Pippo Delbono. For dance, Enzo Cosimi, Sosta Palmizi, Wim Vandekeybus and Virgilio Sieni himself, who therefore returns to a hall he knows. Among the international masters, Bob Wilson and Peter Brook. There's a thread tying this list to the show: Steve Lacy, who passed through Teatro La Fede in the Seventies, is also among the musicians Sieni has collaborated with in his career. From February 18 to 21, 2027 pass through Vascello Sieni, the light designer Marco Cassini, the sound designer Mauro Forte and Pietro Viti with his slides. And with them, through the recorded voice, Pier Paolo Pasolini, and through his lines Antonio Gramsci, buried on the other side of the Tiber.

Frequently asked questions about Ma a che serve la luce?

When does Ma a che serve la luce? play at Teatro Vascello?

Virgilio Sieni's Ma a che serve la luce? is at Teatro Vascello from February 18 to 21, 2027: Thursday the 18th and Friday the 19th at 21:00, Saturday the 20th at 19:00, Sunday the 21st at 17:00. The show lasts 55 minutes.

What is Virgilio Sieni's show about?

Virgilio Sieni's show is a dance on Pier Paolo Pasolini's poem Le ceneri di Gramsci, with the poet's recorded voice alternating with Sieni's. It premiered at Pergola in Florence on November 26, 2025, for the 50th anniversary of Pasolini's death.

Which music is heard in Ma a che serve la luce?

In Ma a che serve la luce? you hear music by Bach, William Basinski and Odetta Holmes. According to Danza&Danza, among them are the Aria from the Goldberg Variations played by Glenn Gould, Basinski's Melancholia and the spiritual Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.

Do you need to know contemporary dance to understand the show?

No, for Ma a che serve la luce? the key is the word: Pasolini's tercets are heard and the dance accompanies them. The advice is to read the poem Le ceneri di Gramsci first, even just the opening stanzas.

Who is Virgilio Sieni?

Virgilio Sieni is a Florentine choreographer and dancer born in 1958, a three-time Ubu Prize winner. Since 2003 he has worked in Florence at the Cango dance center, and in 2007 he founded the Academy on the Art of Gesture, which is open to non-professionals too.

Where do you buy tickets?

Tickets for Ma a che serve la luce? are bought from the show's page on the Teatro Vascello website, which links to the authorized presale network, or at the box office at Via Giacinto Carini 78. Prices are on the theater's official channels.

Where is the tomb of Gramsci mentioned in the title?

The tomb of Antonio Gramsci, from which Pasolini's poem takes its title, is in the Non-Catholic Cemetery of Rome, in Testaccio, next to the Pyramid of Cestius. From Vascello you get there by train to Ostiense.

Final advice on Ma a che serve la luce?

Ma a che serve la luce? is a short, precious show: less than an hour in which a three-time Ubu Prize-winning choreographer dances Pasolini's tercets to the voice of the poet. In our view it is worth preparing for it with two simple gestures, reading the opening stanzas of the poem and stopping by the Non-Catholic Cemetery, and then letting Sieni's body guide you. If you follow Vascello, fit it into a February that runs from Aeschylus to Testori: three very different shows, with Pasolini as the hidden thread.

Article written by the editorial team of Tour Leader Pro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences.

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