Sentiti Tabacchine | seventh residence

The leader of the new project is dancer and choreographer Mattia Carlucci, who presents the idea for a performance inspired by a tragic yet little-known event that took place in his native region, Puglia.

On 13 June 1960, the feast day of Saint Anthony, a fire devastated a tobacco factory in Calimera, in the heart of Grecia Salentina. The blaze was sparked by a cigarette butt, perhaps not discarded by accident. Twelve female tobacco workers, who were not assigned to that department, were trapped in the fire. Six of them lost their lives.

From this forgotten episode – deeply rooted in the history of Southern Italy – Mattia Carlucci creates a work that places the body at its centre as an instrument of memory and storytelling, becoming both a performative gesture and an act of denunciation.

“Sentiti tabacchine” aims to shine a spotlight on the South: exploited, abandoned, wounded, yet also alive, plural and resilient. A South where “myth and ritual”, folk beliefs, ancient songs and ancestral dances endure through time, creating a powerful and invisible bond between generations.

Mattia wants to tell the story of the feeling that runs through his homeland. “Sentiti tabacchine” is the gesture through which he seeks to restore a voice to the dignity of women’s work, oral memory and the strength of the community.

The six tobacco workers of Calimera, brought onto the stage, represent the Voice of those women, while the burning factory becomes the symbol of a place that sometimes turns work into a trap with no way out.

The body is not merely a means of expression, but becomes an altar, an archive and an act of denunciation, in constant dialogue with music – suspended between electronics, percussive elements and ancient sounds from the Mediterranean and folk tradition – and with visual art.

The heritage of Southern Italy’s oral dance and song traditions thus embraces the landscape of World Music, in an ancestral, timeless and mythical atmosphere, to tell the story of the present.

“Sentiti tabacchine” will make its debut at the Auditorium of the Conservatorio A. Casella de L’Aquila.

The international performance will take place in Prague, where, thanks to the partnership with the Music and Dance Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts, the show will be performed again at the Ponec Theatre.

“Playing Memories” is a project by the Saint Louis College of Music, created in co-production with the Conservatorio Alfredo Casella de L’Aquila, the Fondazione Accademia Teatro alla Scala di Milano, RUFA – Rome University of Fine Arts and ISIA Roma Design – Istituto Superiore per le Industrie Artistiche.