Sacred Sky, Sacred Earth: Florence

Take a journey at twilight into a site-specific evening of art, dance, drama, music and meditation, illuminating the stunning vision which is La Pietra.

As the audience enters the grounds, there will be opportunities to make personal connections to the land in symbolic ways. Visitors will discover intimate scenes of dance, poetry, and Shakespeare created by dancers and actors of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts throughout the Renaissance Revival Gardens designed by the Actons in the 1930s.  A salone will offer live music, film and conversations about environmental concerns. The evening will close at sunset with a temporary light sculpture by artist Peter Terezakis, enhanced by the movement of the performers, with the intent of illuminating our earth’s sacred nature within the setting of sustainable gardens.

Created in collaboration with visual artist and Tisch Open Arts professor Peter Terezakis; choreographer Allyson Green, Dean of NYU Tisch School of the Arts; director Daniel Spector, Tisch Drama Classical Studio; choreographer Indah Walsh; British composer Alan Stones; and dance and drama students and alumni of the NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Light installations by Terezakis and site-specific performances with Green have been recreated and repeated in a variety of outdoor settings on several continents since 1995. Terezakis and Green are interested in the use of art and technology as an evolving means for spiritual engagement bringing increased awareness to environmental issues. Terezakis transforms ordinary florescent lamps into brushstrokes of light which momentarily paint earth and sky. Their evanescent, fiery discharges change the way we perceive space, invoking a sensation of physical movement across an expanding landscape of both time and imagination, as witnessed beneath the vault of heaven.