by Charlie Khalil Prince
artistic residency in February 2026
open rehearsal + talk: February 19, 6:30 PM
Teatro Biblioteca Quarticciolo
Shifting the Silence unfolds as a research in motion, an open field in which memory and presence collide. It departs from the body as a site of inscription, marked by exile, colonial inheritance and the fractures of displacement. In what ways do bodies carry with them histories of violence and erasure, and how can dance refuse these legacies by transforming vulnerability into revolt? The research draws on multiple movement traditions: the dabke, with its communal force and its defiance of fragmentation; ballet, with its vertical discipline and the weight of its European inheritance; and contemporary dance, porous and investigative, restless in its desire to dismantle and reconstruct form. These vocabularies do not harmonise — they clash, interrupt and disturb one another, producing a choreography in which cultural submissions are both remembered and destabilised. Movement and music exist in reciprocity. The act of producing sound is choreographic, shaping air into rhythm, while the choreographic act is musical, inscribing time with embodied melodies. This crossing of disciplines creates a body that is at once instrument and archive: a container of grief, a witness to histories, and an impulse reaching toward imaginary futures.
Charlie Khalil Prince is a Lebanese artist working across dance and performance. His research is rooted in the intersection of the political and the poetic body. His transdisciplinary choreographic work and installations have been presented at several major festivals and theatres, including SPRING Festival (NL), Dansmakers Amsterdam (NL), Rencontres chorégraphiques internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis (FR), Vancouver International Dance Festival (CA), Oktoberdans (NO), Fabbrica Europa (IT) and BIPOD (LB). In 2018 he received the prestigious Boghossian Foundation Prize for Dance and Performance, awarded by Villa Empain in Brussels and Beirut. He was also an apap 2020 artist supported by the European Union’s Culture Programme for the period 2017–2020. In 2019 he created his first piece NOT ON THIS EARTH, a collaboration with Dutch choreographer Keren Rosenberg, created and premiered at DANSMAKERS Amsterdam.
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FROM THE WORKSHOP LO SGUARDO PERFORMATIVO
Spettatore 1: Il silenzio si è mosso davvero. Lo abbiamo sentito muoversi nella sala come se avesse un peso, un corpo.
Spettatore 2: “Shifting the Silence” tratta il silenzio non come assenza come materia plastica: plasmato, spostato, interrotto con precisione. La partitura spaziale è ben costruita e il senso del timing rivela una maturità compositiva.
Spettatore 3: Ogni silenzio ha una forma. Questo era rotondo, poi si è fatto spigoloso, poi quasi liquido. Ho pensato alle pause nelle conversazioni difficili — quelle che durano troppo e diventano un altro discorso. “Shifting the Silence” si guarda e si ascolta con la pelle. E alla fine, il silenzio che porti fuori è diverso da quello con cui sei entrato.
