By Miriam Bonaccorso with Marco Varriale and Renée Ferro

Sleep Effect is a contemporary dance creation that investigates the theme of “existential sleep,” inspired by the text Message for an Eagle Who Thinks It Is a Chicken by Anthony de Mello. The project explores a condition of passivity and unawareness that runs through the human being in relation to life: an existence lived in a state of half-sleep, unable to fully perceive reality.The choreographic research develops from work with the eyes closed, generating an altered perceptual quality that transforms the dancers into “flies in a dark room.” In this state, bodies act, meet, and enter into relationship, yet they cyclically fall back into a condition of inertia and sensory blindness, making visible the human drama of living without awareness. Through specific training, improvisational practices, and deep listening, it is the body itself that constructs the narrative, producing an emergent dramaturgy that arises from physical experience rather than from a predefined structure. Sleep Effect takes shape as an open process in which movement becomes an act of resistance and an attempt at awakening, while remaining suspended between the desire for transformation and the impossibility of completely escaping the state of sleep