LUISA SPINA

The best-known legend is told in Homer'sOdyssey. Manly known for transforming men into pigs through the use of magic, potions and herbs. Odysseus meets Circe on her island on his long journey back home. Here she changes most of his crew into pigs and becomes his lover for a year. In most literature, Circe has been taken as the archetype of the predatory female, this behaviour made her notorious both as a ruthless witch and as a type of sexually free woman.

Circe was written by men who depicted her with eyes embedded in the patriarchal system they belonged to. However, in the recent Madeline Miller’s novel“Circe”, the character finds her voice. Her life journey is revealed and we getto know it from her point of view. Born in a god’s men world, she feels out of place having to conform to a system she didn’t choose. Her falling in love and imagining a happy ending turns into an illusion, and out of rage for not meeting her desires, she discovers her powers. It’s only though when exiled in the island of Aiaia, alone, immersed in nature, that she becomes a master of transformation, a so-called “witch”.

Circe has been the symbol for ultimate outcast for centuries, however by owning her story she becomes a heroine that questions all the structures in which she was born, and finding her way into authenticity trough building a deep relationship with nature. The patriarchal system over centuries has caused oppression on the human being as a whole and transformed our relationship to nature by separating us from it. Overall, the project wants to bring to life, through performance, the myth, bringing the participants and spectators closer to themselves and closer to earth in the light of the current human/climate crisis. 

Shot in Hamburg in a local park, the film explores the moment Circe falls on Aiaia island when banned and exiled for eternity by her father. This moment of falling becomes a terrain for existential questions and it becomes a multi-sensorial intimate dance with oneself and nature.