On 17 and 18 November, during the Tolerance and Inclusivity Week, Expo Dubai hosted the musical workshop “Le Due Lune” (Two Moons), which through a combination of Arabic folk music and Italian traditions created a vivid cultural connection between East and West.
Performed by the World Youth Orchestra, the project is the product of a collaboration between the University of Naples “L’Orientale”, the project leader, and the IULM University of Milan, with the support of the Fondazione Cultura e Arte Internazionale.
The purpose of the performance was to celebrate the differences and similarities between Arab-Islamic and Western culture, creating a dialogue through storytelling, theatrical action and music.
«The show is a project of L’”Orientale”, a university that studies foreign languages and cultures, sometimes mistakenly considered as distant and alien» commented professor Roberta Denaro, coordinator of the project of the University of Naples L’Orientale, during the preview of the project at the Du Mesnil Palace. Professor Denaro said that the project Two Moons is «a clear example of fruitful dialogue between different skills, cultures and artistic visions that embodies what we want to bring to Dubai».
On 17 November, the Italy Pavilion’s Amphitheatre hosted a listening workshop on the poetic texts and on the music of the show, while the performance “Two Moons” was staged on 18 November, at the Dubai Millennium Amphitheatre at Expo, directed by Damiano Giuranna.
«This piece talks about the beauty of listening. Listening to the music of the Mediterranean basin – our music, our family – and combining it with the Arabic and Italian languages to celebrate both our differences and our similarities. By listening, you get the feeling that we are one big family» said Giuranna.
Inspired by the famous collection of Middle Eastern stories “The Thousand and One Nights”, the project combined storytelling and music, alternating the elegance of the word with the seduction of sounds to tell the long history of exchanges between Asia, the Middle East and Mediterranean Europe.
Besides the musicians of the World Youth Orchestra, Two Moons included actresses Valeria Almerighi and Silina Choueiry, and was accompanied by the projection of a visual itinerary, designed by IULM University and Giuseppe Carrieri, that projected “an altar of scenery and landscapes, ancient and archaic, that build the panorama of a distance that belongs to us and that looks at the kasbahs of Naples as the favorite seat of a web of worlds without geography”, as Carrieri defined it.
Narration in Italian and Arabic, accompanied by the universal language of music, invited viewers to cross every linguistic, cultural and geographical barrier to hear a wonderful story of inclusiveness, peace and tolerance.
