Alpheus & Arethusa
A performance for dance, theatre and music
Dramaturgy, direction, stage texts, costumes and set design Daniele Marranca
Choreography Irénée Blin
Original music Joe Schittino
2 dancers
2 musicians (cello and saxophone)
Told through the languages of dance, music and poetry, the performance invites the audience on a dreamlike journey through ancestral symbols and figures drawn from the myth of the nymph Arethusa and the river god Alpheus.
Artistic Statement
In Syracuse, on the island of Ortygia, the Fountain of Arethusa remains a witness to a cultural heritage that has inspired countless poets. To immerse oneself in ancient tales is to journey through memory, discovering humankind through the fantasies that shape it.
In the myth of Alpheus and Arethusa we find the fear of the sacred and the need for an alliance with it, the trauma of migration, the discovery of otherness, the encounter between peoples, the vital role of water.
Myth is neither a fact nor an allegory.
It is, rather, a primordial language whose constituent elements, figures and events, unfold over time as a polysemic universe.
A language that can still suggest events, beliefs, rites and explanations, while inviting personal readings and reworkings: stitchings, junctions and creative inventions.
Myth is by nature an endless questioning. Enriched by every earlier representation, it exists only in the present moment, through the one who tells it.
It has no "original" version, even though, in the case of Alpheus and Arethusa, Ovid's account is often raised, by virtue of its fame, to the status of the "official" one.
The research underlying the artistic project investigates the present and enters history, looking back as far as it can, not to identify an origin or an end, but to draw on the widest possible range of testimonies. The performance then breaks down, expands, multiplies and reassembles every reference, every interpretation, every new poetic invention, transfiguring them all.
The unfolding of events, and thus the passing of time on stage, is conceived as a metamorphosis of gesture and figure.
It is dance that brings this intention to life, crowned by occasional interventions of the spoken word and by the more insistent presence of music.
The choreographic work Alpheus & Arethusa does not seek to tell a story, still less to update its messages for our time. Instead, it seeks to contemplate its two protagonists and to dream around the representations to which they have been subject.
They, or rather their ghosts, echo not only through the history of literature, the visual arts, theatre, dance, music and poetry, but, more broadly, through collective memory.
The only certainty granted to us, in the end, is the survival of two names, and of an intimacy withheld from us: Alpheus & Arethusa.
Écriture chorégraphique
La cinétographie Laban, au cœur du processus d'écriture chorégraphique, a guidé la lecture, la synthèse et la réélaboration des poses symboliques et iconographiques dont nous nous sommes inspirés dans plusieurs parties du spectacle.
De l'écriture de la pose à celle de son environnement dynamique, naturel ou imaginaire, puis aux liaisons entre les poses ainsi définies, nous sommes parvenus à un caractère dynamique-postural qui a guidé la création des mouvements.
Technical Information
Minimum stage dimensions: 7 × 7 m
Adaptable to non-conventional spaces
Set-up: depending on the venue
Can be configured with the audience on 3 sides
Duration: 50 minutes
Alpheus et Arethusa – from Publius Ovidius Naso
Metamorphoses, Book V
Arethusa, a nymph of Diana, bathes one day, after a hunt, in the waters of the river Alpheus, the greatest and most important river of the Peloponnese.
The river god, faced with the nymph's beauty, falls hopelessly in love with her.
At his calls, she flees; the river, having taken on a body, pursues her.
Exhausted and without hope, Arethusa calls on Diana for help. The goddess opens a chasm in the earth, into which the nymph, turned into water, plunges, until she flows forth as a spring in Ortygia.
Alpheus, in despair, still does not give her up.
Becoming a river once more, he travels beneath the Mediterranean until he reaches Ortygia and joins his beloved spring.
Support
The work was developed in residency at:
L'Antarès – Vauréal,
Centre National de Danse Contemporaine – Angers,
Centre National de la Danse – Pantin,
Le Dôme – Pontoise,
Galleria Civica Montevergini – Syracuse.
The music was recorded at
Le Nautilus, Jouy-le-Moutier (Val-d'Oise).
The project was supported by:
Ville de Pontoise,
Département du Val-d'Oise (creation grant, 2015).
CADMIUM compagnie
Founded in France in 2002, CADMIUM compagnie is an artistic and cultural association dedicated to research and creation around movement. Today it mainly supports and produces the transdisciplinary work of Daniele Marranca and Irénée Blin, developing projects that span dance, theatre, performance, visual arts and participatory practices, often in dialogue with urban space, collective memory and local territories.
Over the years, CADMIUM has created international projects such as Délit d'identité, Alpheus & Arethusa and On dirait que je serais, presented in contexts including the DanceProject Festival in Trieste and Fabbrica Europa in Florence. From 2021 to 2023, CADMIUM took part, with a pilot project bridging dance and philosophy, in COESO – Collaborative Engagement on Societal Issues, a project coordinated by the EHESS in Paris and funded under the Horizon 2020 programme.
More recently, the company has developed research into Carnival as a space for creation, participation and contemporary ritual, producing in 2024, in Sciacca, the itinerant performance Arrivau Peppi Nappa, u purtaru li Nanni, supported by Culture Moves Europe. In 2026, CADMIUM was also awarded Erasmus+ KA210 – Youth funding for the project Symbolic Action & Civic Expression, developed with partners in Italy and Cyprus.
Since 2024, the company has been hosted at The Window in Paris, a laboratory for artistic experimentation directed by Catherine Baÿ, where it pursues long-term research linked to its Carnival project.
Creative Team
Daniele Marranca
is a visual and transdisciplinary artist, author, performer, director and graphic designer. Working between France and Italy, for more than twenty years he has interwoven visual arts, performance, research-creation and participatory practices.
Since 2011 he has shared the artistic direction and coordination of CADMIUM compagnie with choreographer Irénée Blin, conceiving works, workshops and performative devices. His research explores the relationship between body, image, narrative and collective representation, with a particular focus on rituals, intangible cultural heritage and carnival traditions. In this field he is developing Carnoval, a research-creation project that studies, transmits and revives carnival cultures through fieldwork, workshops, performances and participatory practices, building an international network of artists, researchers, associations, cultural institutions and local communities across Europe.
He has worked in visual communication since 2003: in 2008 he founded Newih Srl in Syracuse (communication, marketing and business development), where he was artistic director until 2014.
He is the author of Andrea (stories, illustrations and songs) and the author or co-author of dance, theatre and music projects such as Délit d'identité, Alpheus & Arethusa and the transdisciplinary episodic project On dirait que je serais. In 2012 he won First Prize in the Club degli Autori – Montedit literary competition with his poem Parole all'amico; his visual and social art project PRÆSIDEO was selected for Independents3 at ArtVerona.
He has developed research-creation and participatory research projects such as Be Seated and Dancing Philosophy, a pilot project of COESO – Collaborative Engagement on Societal Issues (coordinated by the EHESS and funded by Horizon 2020), at the crossroads of philosophy, body practices and artistic creation.
A member of L.A.P. – Laboratoire des Arts de la Performance, he has taken part in solo and group performances in and around Paris (Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo, Mains d'Œuvres, Le Générateur, 59 Rivoli, The Window).
From November 2026 to February 2027, together with Irénée Blin, he will lead a workshop for students of the DU ProPhilia – Pratiques de la diffusion philosophique at Université Côte d'Azur, a Master's-level programme combining theory, practice and creation, culminating in a performance for the Nice Carnival.
He trained in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Palermo, holds a diploma in multidisciplinary Soundpainting and has trained in carpentry.
Irénée Blin
is a dancer and choreographer born in Paris. She is also a movement notator (Kinetography Laban) and a specialist in Functional Analysis of the Body in Dance Movement (AFCMD). She trained in classical and contemporary dance, as well as in baroque dance and music (violin, piano and classical singing). She won a First Prize in contemporary dance at the Conservatoire à Rayonnement Régional de Boulogne-Billancourt before joining MODEM, the advanced training programme of the Zappalà Danza company in Catania, Italy. At the same time, she pursued university studies in literature and language sciences, earning a Master II (Research) from Université Paris-Sorbonne. A choreographer since 2005, she develops an artistic practice at the crossroads of dance, music and theatre, with a particular interest in the dialogue between dance and voice. She holds a second-cycle diploma in Kinetography Laban from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris and a diploma in AFCMD, and places these tools at the heart of her artistic and teaching practice. As a teacher, she gives courses in anatomy and physiology, AFCMD and movement notation at numerous conservatoires, training centres and universities in France and Italy, for amateur and professional dancers (from the age of 12) in classical, contemporary, jazz and hip-hop styles. She also takes part in projects combining dance, movement awareness and musical learning, notably with children aged 6 to 12 in the Démos orchestras of the Philharmonie de Paris, as well as with amateur and professional musicians. Since 2002 she has co-directed the artistic work and production of CADMIUM compagnie's projects.
Joe Schittino
was born in Syracuse in 1977. He graduated in piano and composition from the Istituto Musicale "V. Bellini" in Catania and completed advanced studies with Azio Corghi and Ivan Fedele at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome (2009).
He worked with Klaus Rohleder (La Neuberin, opera, 2007) and has collaborated with CADMIUM compagnie since 2013.
He has received commissions from the Delta Saxophone Quartet, the Maison d'Éducation de la Légion d'Honneur, the Musikverein Osnabrück, the Else Lasker-Schüler Gesellschaft, the Fondazione Luciano Benetton, the Teatro Stabile di Catania, the Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico and the Gruppo Strumentale Ciampi (Piacenza) for EXPO Milano 2015.
His performers include the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, the Orchestra Filarmonica Italiana, the Orchestra of the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, the Coro Farnesiano, Duo Narthex, Quartetto Hermes and Ensemble Algoritmo, as well as Alim Shakh, Steve Martland, Hélène Fauchère, Fabio Maestri, Marco Angius, Aki Kuroda and Angelo Cavarra.
His music has been performed in twelve European countries, Russia, Taiwan and the USA; broadcast by ZDF, Hessischer Rundfunk and RAI Radio3; recorded by Tactus, Champs Hill Records and RCR; and published by Suvini Zerboni, Edition Gamma, Ebert Musik Verlag and BAM.
He has taught at the conservatories of Adria and Rovigo and is currently director of the Istituto Musicale Pietro Vinci in Caltagirone.
Dates
France
Centre Culturel Charles Vanel – Lagny – December 2017
Theatre monologue Arethusa as Told by Men
Exhibition Nomen Arethusa Collection
Métamorphose dance workshop for middle and secondary school students
Alpheus & Arethusa, performance for dance, music and theatre
L'Antarès – Vauréal – January 2016
Theatre monologue Arethusa as Told by Men
Exhibition Nomen Arethusa Collection
Métamorphose dance workshop
Alpheus & Arethusa, performance for dance, music and theatre
Théâtre Municipal – Montsoult – May 2015
Métamorphose dance workshop for nursery school children
Performance by the children of the workshop, inspired by Alpheus & Arethusa
Alpheus & Arethusa, performance for dance, music and theatre (version for young audiences)
Le Dôme – Pontoise – November 2014
Urban performance inspired by Alpheus & Arethusa
Theatre monologue Arethusa as Told by Men
Exhibition Nomen Arethusa Collection
Exhibition of the previously unseen work Fontaine d'amour – la résurgence d'Alphée
Métamorphose dance workshop
Alpheus & Arethusa, performance for dance, music and theatre
Italy
Teatro Stabile Sloveno – Trieste – October 2018
Exhibition Nomen Arethusa Collection
Alpheus & Arethusa, performance for dance, music and theatre
Galleria Civica Montevergini – Syracuse – May 2014
Exhibition Nomen Arethusa Collection
Alpheus & Arethusa, performance for dance, music and theatre
Storytelling of the myths of the nymphs Cyane and Arethusa
Guided tours of Ortygia, with a boat trip around the island
Tasting of local produce