The Angel and the Moon. Evenings of dance, circus, and performing arts at Castel Sant'Angelo

Castel Sant'Angelo hosts an exceptional series of evenings of dance, circus, and performing arts, under the nocturnal allure of the Eternal City's stars.

The program includes: from July 30 to August 1, 2025, The Castle of the Obstinate Angels - An artistic journey through the Castle's most fascinating spaces, conceived and directed by circus playwright Giacomo Costantini. The show encompasses all the many expressive forms of circus and their experimentation with live music, theater, and literature and it is structured into seven stages that evoke the legend of the Angel who, even in adversity, always returns to watch over us from the top of the monument. The audience, accompanied by Costantini himself (Circo El Grito), writer Wu Ming 2 (Wu Ming Foundation), and actress Clio Gaudenzi, encounters tightrope walkers, acrobats, magicians, musicians, and jugglers along the way. The music performed live by Clio Gaudenzi (piano), Giacomo Costantini (crystallophone), Valeria Sturba (vocals, violin, theremin), and Giuseppe Franchellucci (cello, vocals) offers a journey through centuries of sound history, from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. The show features Giulia Arcangeli, Luis Paredes, Selyna Bogino, Guenda Bournens, Andrea Farnetani, and Novas. The Castle of the Obstinate Angels is a project funded by the Directorate General for Entertainment of the Ministry of Culture as part of the program for the promotion of live performances in museums. It represents a groundbreaking innovation: for the first time, a circus performance takes place within a cultural venue like Castel Sant'Angelo.

On August 5, 2025 instead, the Sala Paolina will host The World Elsewhere: A Nighttime Story – a performance conceived by Nicola Galli. This is a dance-ceremony in which a shamanic figure, masked and dressed by the choreographer himself, leads the audience on an initiatory journey through symbols, sounds, and silences, drawing on South American rituals and Japanese Noh theater, with soundscapes inspired by Giacinto Scelsi. The carefully adorned shamanic figure leads a magical and timeless ceremony. The action is conceived at dusk, enveloped in the luminous hues of gold, cyan, and purple, which then fade into the darkness of the night. In the performance, the poetic gesture transforms the Roman sunset into a danced epiphany between art, history, and contemporaneity. Produced by TIR Danza and Stereopsis, in co-production with Marche Teatro / Inteatro Festival and Oriente Occidente, the show is part of the NID Platform 2024, developed during artistic residencies supported by the Almagià network.

The Angel and the Moon thus offers audiences an intense and multifaceted experience, in which dance, ritual, storytelling, and circus intertwine in perfect harmony with the history and millennia-old architecture of Castel Sant'Angelo. It is an invitation to experience the monument in a new light—under the moonlight and guided by an angel—the symbol of the Castle—who transforms each performance into a contemporary ritual suspended between memory and imagination.

Photo: Castel Sant'Angelo Facebook official page