HIDDEN

Created by Daniel Proietto, Hidden is a journey to the origins of art, myth and human consciousness. Blending film with live dance and music, the performance was first developed for the monumental spaces of Lascaux IV (International Centre for Parietal Art) and conceived to unfold across architectural and natural environments — evoking a ritual space of presence and ancestral memory.

Around 17,000 years ago, humans gathered there, at Lascaux, in reverence. They didn’t conquer the cave or erase its history. They carved their dreams into stone — and understood something we are still trying to remember: that to make a mark is not an act of power, but an act of belonging.

Through our bodies, our ancestors are watching. Their hopes and traumas move through us — guiding, warning, remembering. Hidden honors their efforts, and asks what kind of ancestors we are becoming.

The words of Proietto transform into the shadowy figure of the Minotaur wandering labyrinthine spaces to dances echoing prehistoric rites, Hidden explores the primal forces that shaped human expression. Flickering light animates ancient cave paintings; sound conjures the presence of the unseen. Cave art is reclaimed here as the first cinematic act — a primal fusion of image, movement, and ritual. The mask — as mediator between human and mythic forces — becomes a vessel through which memory and archetype move through the living body. In this, art is reclaimed as our oldest and most sacred form of communication.

Proietto’s work resists spectacle and entertainment. He returns to the ritual roots of dance — where movement was not performance, but presence. In Hidden, dance becomes a space of remembrance, listening, and embodied time. A space where ancestral memory meets the ethical choices of the present.

Performed by acclaimed ballerina Yolanda Correa and Daniel Proietto, the work embodies themes of birth, life, and mortality. It merges myth, movement, and deep time — inviting reflection on what endures in us, what must be reclaimed, and what we carry forward.

Originally created as a commission for Lascaux IV, Hidden was developed in dialogue with Snøhetta, the Norwegian National Opera & Ballet, and KNOW NATION. It now appears in a new spatial adaptation for the Artonov Festival, with the Tana Quartet performing music by Belgian composer Jean-Paul Dessy (b. 1963), whose work blends contemporary classical language with a spiritual dimension — resonating with Hidden’s vision of art as presence and offering.