Dance and voice – Kea Tonetti

Live-music – Tivitavi

Duration: 60’

In Japanese culture Shishi Gami is the spirit of the forest, a universal symbol that represents the forces of nature, the woods and the animals in their mythical dimension before human intervention modified their equilibrium with nature. It has similarities to the myth of Dionysus, to that of the Celtic Kernunnos, the man with deer antlers who lives in the forest, and to that of the Indian Pashupati, the lord of the animals. Shishi Gami is the Supreme Being that has power over the life and death of all creatures that live in the forest. With every step, wherever his feet touch the earth, plants and flowers bloom and immediately die. He has the power to take life and to give life. When he crosses water, he has the power to walk upon its surface. He is born with the new moon and the cycle of his life and death follows the lunar phases. It is believed that his head gives the power of eternal youth. Inspired by “Princess Mononoke” by Hayao Miyazaki, the performance culminates in the moment of the tragic clash of power between the forces of nature and man’s intervention to possess and dominate them. The catharsis occurs with the death and rebirth of the spirit of the forest. With it, nature and man flourish again in a new world, announced by the song of the returning birds.

“The mineral world, the plant world, the animal and human world and the subtle world of the spirits and of the gods each exist because of one another and for one another. There can be no true approach of the divine, no seeking of the divine, no science, no religion, no mysticism that does not take this fundamental unit of creation into consideration.” (Alain Daniélou)

Presented at the Festival Rosenhof in Tegernau, Germany in 2009;  at the Sconfinando Sarzana festival 2010 in Sarzana , at the Eco-Art Festival, Asti, Italy, 2011; in the Theatre La scala della vita, Milan, 2010.