Cani lunari - Francesco Marilungo / Körper

As part of Scintille. The part is a Whole, the 2026 season of ORBITA | Spellbound - National Dance Production Center, Spazio Rossellini is hosting Francesco Marilungo’s latest choreographic project, an investigation into the figure of the witch, the healer, as an emblem of archaic and powerful knowledge that resists the logic of utility and visibility.

Choreographer and performer Francesco Marilungo attended the Dance Theater Workshop at the Paolo Grassi School of Dramatic Arts in Milan. Since 2010, has worked with internationally renowned choreographers, such as Julie Anne Stanzak, Masaki Iwana, and Romeo Castellucci. He has performed for Enzo Cosimi, Antonio Marras, and Alessandro Sciarroni, and then began his own creative journey in search of a personal code between performance, dance, and the visual arts.

“Cani Lunari” (moon dogs) takes its name from an optical phenomenon that sometimes occurs in the winter months: iridescent flashes that can appear on either side of the full moon due to the refraction of moonlight in ice crystals in the troposphere. In popular tradition, these signs in the sky heralded the arrival of bad weather: by counting the stars within the halo, it was possible to predict the number of days of stormy weather. Starting from this link between the moon and the symbolic dimension of magic, the show immerses us in an imaginary world rooted in the archaic feminine, inviting us to recover something of the world of witches in our consciousness in order to try to re-enchant the world.