BELLO! Thoughts from the director

Beauty is not an answer, but a wound.
Something that arrives suddenly, passes through you, and does not ask permission.
It does not comfort. It does not reassure. It unsettles.

Bello! was born from this feeling: a word repeated too many times,  until it became light, empty, until it turned into noise. A word we use to judge, to close things off, to stop feeling. Let’s try to reopen it. To let it fall. To listen to the sound it makes when it no longer means anything.

On stage there are young bodies, exposed, imperfect. They fall, support each other, turn into temporary architectures. There are no machines, or almost none. Only what is essential: relation. The group as a living organism – fragile and powerful – capable of what no individual could ever do alone. That is where something happens. That is where beauty may appear.

Bello! is an exclamation, not a certainty.
It is the moment when something surprises us before we have time to judge it.
It is an equilibrium that lasts only an instant, and then disappears.

It is a laugh born where we did not expect it.

If something in this work holds,
it is not success.
It is attention.
It is a brief disturbance.
The feeling of having been awake, for a moment, together.

I was not interested in making a beautiful show.
I was interested in understanding when we stopped recognising beauty, when we allowed it to fade, slowly, through neglect – buried under excess, habit, and the urgency to say “I like it.”

For me, circus is the ideal place to stay with this question. Circus does not pretend. Risk is real. Sweat is real. Trust is real. Every gesture is a silent pact between those who act and those who watch. And inside that pact, everything is at stake: ethics before aesthetics, necessity before form.

– Francesco Sgrò, Director of Bello!

Photos: Luca Quaia