Rome responded, once again, with warm and intense participation. Spazio45 in Testaccio was filled with people arriving from all over the city, attracted by the energy of an event that did not merely close an Erasmus+ project, but transformed a simple evening into a true collective ritual.
The event marked the conclusion of Emotional Respectful Men (ERM), an initiative co-funded by the European Union and led by Skill Up srl, set up to address the lack of affective education in formal training. A project that has travelled through three countries – Italy, Spain and Turkey – to build an educational pathway capable of combating gender violence starting from an understanding of emotions and the roots of stereotypes.
But the evening was not just a moment of theoretical reflection. It was an experience lived on the skin, in the true sense of the word.
“A church-like silence, a rite of liberation”
When I came out into the audience in my underwear and bra, offering my body as a mirror for the most painful words, the silence that was created was that of the great occasions, the one charged with meaning, which weighs more than a thousand voices. A church-like silence. I took in the greatest insults people had received in their lives, allowing them to release them, to let them go. And in that moment, the performance Dressed By You, staged together with Loredana Margheriti, became something more than an artistic action: it was a spell.
The audience heard, welcomed, participated. The closing with Schubert’s Ave Maria, sung with an almost sacred intensity, amplified every emotion, leaving me trembling, overwhelmed by the power of that moment.
“Buck Up and Cry”, performed with Marco Marassi.
A work created to break the taboo of male crying, accompanied by the recitation of Homeric texts in which the heroes – Achilles, Odysseus, Hector – cry without shame. A theme that deeply touched the audience, who followed the video in a dense silence, full of attention and respect.
“From catharsis to celebration”
And then, as in any self-respecting ritual, catharsis led to celebration. The evening continued with live music by “Quelli del Giovedì” and “Linea di Confine APS”, who made a varied audience dance, from twenty-somethings to seventy-five-year-olds, all united by the same rhythm, the same desire to share and let go.
It was an evening of strong emotions, of reflection and liberation, of heavy silences and light music. An evening that was not just the closure of a project, but a new starting point for those who were there. Because certain experiences do not come to an end: they stay inside, they transform and, inevitably, they live on.
