FAUNO

The Chronicles series opens with FAUNO by Liliana Barros. The Portuguese choreographer engages with an iconic subject from the history of literature, music, and ballet. At the center stands the story of the faun, based on Stéphane Mallarmé’s symbolist poem L’Après-midi d’un faune (“The Afternoon of a Faun”, 1876), which inspired both Claude Debussy’s 1894 composition Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and Vaslav Nijinsky’s 1912 ballet L’Après-midi d’un faune.

Barros is fascinated by how Symbolism, across different art forms, used dreams and taboos as a response to spirituality, invoking the mysterious and the unspoken through myth. She explores what significance these symbolic figures still hold today and how they can be reinterpreted in the age of the Anthropocene.